THE HI B BERT LECTURES, 1881 



LECTURES 



Origin and Growth of Religion 



AS ILLUSTRATED BY SOME POINTS IN THE HISTORY OF 



INDIAN BUDDHISM 



BY 

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS 



Or 1-u/V/j 



NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
1882 



I 




Copyright nv 
G P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
1881 



Press of 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York 




TO MY DEAR FATHER 

IN GRATEFUL AND LOVING REMEMBRANCE 

OK 

COUNSEL, HELP AND SYMPATHY 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Lectdre I. 

THE PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN" THE DEVELOPEMENT 
OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

PAGE 

Eight and wrong uses of the comparative study of religious "belief 
Unnecessary to discover that we are not the sole possessors of 

truth 2 

Similarity of belief no proof of direct borrowing ... 3 
Universality of any belief no test of its truth .... 4 

True task of the historian of religious belief ... 8 
Is there a " Science of Religions"? ..... 10 

Buddhism really modern . . . . . , . 11 

Ideas among which Buddhism was born . . . .12 

Animism ......... 13 

Polytheism .......... 14 

The " soul" and future life . . . . . , 15 

Transmigration . . . . , . , , .17 

Monotheism 18 

Pantheism . . . , . . ... , .19 
Pessimism 21 

Caste ideas . . . , .22 

Other reformers before Buddhism (but on the old lines) . 26 
The Upanishads ......... 27 

Buddhism a radical change of standpoint .... 28 

It is independent of the theory of a " soul" . . . .29 

General resemblances in the religious history of the world . 30 



iv 



CONTENTS. 



Lecture II. 
THE PALI PITAKAS. 

PAOB 

Opinions as to the history of the Pali Pitakas . . .34 
Corresponding opinions as to the history of the New Testament 35 

The Buddhist Order 36 

Kammavacas, forms for conducting meetings of the Order . 38 

Pules of the Order 41 

The Vinaya Pitaka, a manual of these forms and rules . 42 

Its age 43 

The Buddhist Suttas . ' 44 

The Three Pitakas 49 

Summary of the Assalayana Sutta on caste . . .51 
Summary of the Tevijja Sutta on the Three-fold Wisdom 
of Buddhism as contrasted with knowledge of the Three 

Yedas 56 

The Pali Text Society 70 



Lecture IIL 
THE BUDDHIST THEOEY OF KAEMA. 

Transmigration of souls, not originally an Aryan belief . 74 
Various instances of the belief . . . . . .76 

In the early Upanishads . ..... . . . 81 

Probably adopted by the Hindus from the pre-Aryan inha- 
bitants of India . . . 82 

Later Hindu view of . . . ... . . 83 

How Gotama dealt with it , .87 

He discouraged all dreaming about a future life ... 88 

But was not an Agnostic 90 

And did not teach the transmigration of souls . . . 91 

But rather the doctrine of Karma 92 

As a moral cause . 3 



CONTENTS. 



V 



PAGE 

His doctrine of the power of Desire allied to Plato's . . 95 

Cessation of Karma in Arahatship 99 

No reward, therefore, in a future life 101 

Desire for a future life held to be foolish and misleading . 103 
The new views unpalatable to the masses . . . 104 

Answer of Buddhism to them 105 

Ee-birth as an animal ........ 106 

The duty to the race in Buddhism and Comtism. . . 110 
Karma and Fate . . . . . . . . .113 

Karma and Predestination . . . . . .114 

Karma not a theory of future life at all, but a theory to account 
for the present by the past . . . . . .115 

In the Buddhist Birth Stories . . • • . . 116 

Lecture IV. 
BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA 

Gotama, Pythagoras, and Confucius . „ . . .123 
Sketch of Gotama's real history . . . . .126 
The conditions under which the recorded history grew up, 

similar to the conditions in New-Testament times . . 128 
Buddhist views of Gotama's life modified by two ideals . 129 
The first ideal, the Chakka-vatti, or King of Kings . . 130 
His Seven Treasures ....... 131 

His Four Iddhis . . 134 

The Messiah and the Chakka-vatti 135 

The second ideal, that of the Buddha . . * 141 

The Logos and the Buddha .143 

Samma-sambuddha, meaning of ..... 145 
Buddhist and Christian biographies compared . . .147 
Some other sources of the legendary part of the Buddhist , 

accounts . ... . . . . . . 148 

Have the Christian accounts been borrowed from them] . 151 



VI 



CONTEXTS. 



Lecture V. 
GOTAMA'S ORDER. 

P.IOE 

Teachers and ascetics in the valley of the Ganges at the time of 



Gotaraa 153 

Rise of the Buddhist Order 156 

The longing after peace which led to the abandoning of the 

world 158 

Analogies in Christian and heathen writers . . . 161 



The personal love for Gotama which strengthened the desire 170 

Legend of Pingala 171 

The spiritual aims and feelings inculcated on the Order by its 

Founder • 174 

Faith, reason, and works . . ■ . . . .179 
Xo distinction between esoteric and exoteric doctrines . 181 
Each man to be a lamp unto himself, a refuge unto himself . 182 
Reason for dealing here with these points rather than with the 

outward circumstances of the Order . . . .184 
The spirit of the Order as it is to-day 186 

Lecture VL 
LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 

The immense variety of later Buddhism . . . .188 

The expression Xorthern Buddhism inexact . . . .189 

Buddhism, like Romanism, claims never to have changed . 190 
The value of a study of the later forms of Buddhism . . 191 
Romanism and Lamaism ....... 192 

The later forms of a religion can only be understood through 

the earlier ones 195 

And cannot be used as evidence of what the earlier forms were 196 
The Lalita Yistara, its real value not its evidence as to early 

Buddhism, but as to Xepalese belief when it was written . 197 

Its age 19S 

Chinese "translations" of it, arc they translations in our sense? 200 



CONTENTS. 



vii 



PAGE 



Similar "translations" of the Dhammapada . 
The three systems of early Buddhist morality 
Buddhism does not teach suppression of desire . 
Its morality founded on insight of seven kinds 
This doctrine explained . 
And compared with that of the Upanishads . 
The first perception, that of irapermanency 
Buddhist commentary on .... 
The Buddhist substitute for the hope of a future life 
Strangeness of these ideas ..... 



207 
208 
209 
210 
211 
212 
214 
216 



201 



205 



APPENDIX. 



I. Speech in Parliament in 1530 on comparing Religions 

in order to discover Truth . . . . .221 

II. Eeligious Liberty and Toleration as held by the early 

Buddhists . . . .... .229 

III. Pali Text Society 232 

IV. References to Re-birth as an Animal in the Pali Suttas 236 
V. Origen on Metempsychosis ..... 238 

VI. Leibnitz and Lessing on Transmigration . . . 244 

VII. On Souls going to the Moon 247 

VIII. Plato on the Soul ....... 250 

IX. Further Note on the word Pitaka . . . .252 

X. Nirvana 253 

XI. The Key-note of the " Great Vehicle" . . .254 



LECTURE 1 



THE PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE DEVE- 
LOPMENT OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



Right and Wrong 1 Uses of the Comparative Study of 
Religious Beliefs. 

It would be a hopeless task to attempt in six Lec- 
tures, that is to say, in six hours, to give any adequate 
account,, of that great movement which has influenced 
the greater portion of the human race during the lapse 
of so many centuries. It is therefore matter for con- 
gratulation that the task allotted to us is a much lighter 
one, — to discuss those points in the history of Bud- 
dhism which appear likely to throw light on the origin 
and growth of religious belief. This means, as I un- 
derstand it, the origin and growth of religion outside, 
as well as inside, the circle of the Buddhist beliefs 
themselves. What we have to do is, in a word, to 
apply a particular method, the comparative method, 
to the study of the facts revealed to us by the history 
of Buddhism. 

B 



2 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IX THE 



There is indeed a, way of comparing religions one 
with another which leads to mere truisms, or even to 
erroneous conclusions. It is not uncommon, even now, 
to find such comparisons made with the object of 
evoking interest in other religions than our own, by 
showing that they teach some things which are also 
held among us. The Singhalese have au epithet which 
they apply in good-humoured sarcasm to Europeans, 
and which means "fellows with hats, hat fellows'' 
(Tappi-karayo). These fellows with the hats, and 
eighty-ton guns, and other signs of artistic and spiritual 
pre-eminence, are sometimes gifted with a sublime and 
admirable self-complacency which leads them to be 
surprised when they find fundamental truths of moral- 
ity, or good sense in philosophy, taught among peoples 
who arc not white and who go bare-headed. And 
being thus surprised, they are led to produce any evi- 
dence of such things, as if they were remarkable and 
interesting phenomena. 

I beg to deprecate very strongly the study of other 
religions than our own merely to find out points on 
which we can agree with them ; in other words, for it 
usually comes to that, the habit of judging of other 
religions by the degree of resemblance they bear to 
our own beliefs. There are ideas in Buddhism, no 
doubt, with which we can heartily sympathize ; but 
the most instructive points in the history of that, or of 
any other religion, are often those with which we can 



DEVELOPEMENT OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



O 



l<*ast agree. The fact that truth can be found among 
all peoples and in all creeds, has been acknowledged 
through so many centuries by men eminent in the 
Church and out of it, that it has become almost a 
truism, and needs scarcely to be stated, certainly not 
to be proved. 



For such purposes, comparisons are no longer of any 
service; and they will be of worse than no service if 
we imagine that likeness is any proof of direct rela- 
tionship, that similarity of ideas in different countries 
sIioavs that either the one or the other was necessarily 
a borrower. We can easily understand how Clement 
of Alexandria found in coincidences between Christian 
and pagan belief convincing evidence that the whole 
of the wisdom of the world (as he knew it) was bor- 
rowed from the Scriptures of his own faith. His was 
at least both a more liberal and a truer explanation of 
the facts than that other theory of the Jesuit father, 
who is related to have been so struck with the simi- 
larities between the Tibetan and the Eoman ritual, 
that he thought the devil had deluded those unfortu- 
nate people with a blasphemous imitation of the religion 
of Christ. 1 It would of course be going too far to 

1 1 Cor. x. 20, ''They sacrifice to devils and not to God," may 
have suggested the idea. The Spaniard Acosta, quoted in Lord 
Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico, Vol, vi. p. 410, advances 
a similar explanation of the Mexican ritual. 

B 2 



4 



l'!,\f K op 1SUDDIIISM IN THE 



deny that coincidences of belief are occasionally pro- 
duced by actual contact of mind with mind ; but it is 
no more necessary to assume that they always are so, 
than In suppose that chalk cliffs, if there be such, in 
China arc produced by chalk cliffs in the Downs of 
Sussex. They have no connection one with another, 
except that both are the result of similar causes. Yet 
this method of reasoning is constantly found, not only 
through the whole range of the literature of the subject 
from classical times downwards, but even in works of 
the present day. 



There is yet another use of the comparative study of 
religious beliefs, often hitherto, and still unfortunately, 
resorted to, against which we must be sedulously on 
our guard. One of the clearest statements of the doc- 
trine I refer to may be found in a speech, most remark- 
able in many ways, delivered in our own House of 
Commons by a Member whose name has not been 
preserved, a " gentleman from Gray's Inn," in the year 
1530. The date is significant, for the idea of religious 
freedom, or even of religious toleration, was then almost 
unknown. 1 

1 Unknown, that is, among Christians. Complete toleration, as 
is well known, is one of the most fundamental teachings of Bud- 
dhism, and was laid down as a duty in edicts recorded on stone two 
centuries and a half before the birth of Christ. This is so striking 
that I quote these edicts in full in the Appendix. 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



5 



"Mr. Speaker," said this barrister, "if none else 
" but the Bishop of Kochester or his adherents did hold 
" this language, it would less trouble me. But since 
" so many religious and different sects, now conspicuous 
" in the whole world, do not only vindicate unto them- 
" selves the name of the True Church, but labour be- 
" twixt invitations and threats for nothing less than 
"to make us resign our faith to a simple obedience, I 
"shall crave leave to propose what I think fit in this 
"case for us laiques and secular^persons to do 

" For as several teachers, not only differing in lan- 
guage, habit and ceremon} T , or at least in some of 
"these, but peremptory and opposite in their doctrines, 
"do present themselves, much circumspection must be 
"used." .... 

Then, after pointing out the difficulty of choosing 
between these " several teachers," the gentleman from 
Gray's Inn proposes that 

" .... he [the laique] shall hold himself to common, 
"authentic, and universal truths; and consequently 
" inform himself what, in the several articles proposed 
" to him, is so taught as it is first written in the heart, 
" and together delivered in all the laws and religions 
" he can hear of in the whole world ; this certainly can 
"never deceive him." .... 

If this plan of arriving at truth be followed, " it will 
"concern our several teachers to initiate us in this 
" (universally accepted) doctrine before they come to 



G 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



"any particular doctrine, lest otherwise they do like 
"those who would persuade us to renounce daylight 
"to study only by their candle." .... 

The gentleman from Gray's Inn then sets out what 
he thought to be such universally accepted beliefs, and 
concludes : " These therefore, as universal and un- 
" doubted truths, should in my opinion be first received. 
" They will at least keep us from impiety and atheism. 
" . . . . Let us therefore establish and fix these catholic 
"and universal notions: .... so that whether the 
" Eastern, "Western, Northern or Southern teachers — 
"and particularly whether my lord Rochester, Luther, 
k - Eecius, Zwinglius, Erasmus, Mclanchthon, &c. — be 
" in the right, we laiqucs may so build upon these 
•• catholic and infallible grounds of religion, as what- 
soever superstructure of faith be raised, these foun- 
"dations yet may support them." 

The speaker — evidently a man of rare toleration and 
enlightenment — was a Catholic, and his speech is really 
nothing else but the Quod semper, quod ubique, 
quod ab omnibus, of the Catholic Church applied 
in a way which would have put an end at once to 
the bitter feelings and useless persecutions which so 
lamentably disgraced the eventful struggle then already 
commencing to shake thrones and peoples. His view 
has also much in common with another well-known 
adage, Vox populi vox Dei; and if the "gentlc- 
" man from Gray's Inn" had been speaking only of 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



7 



elementary morals, one might go a long way with him. 
But in matters of religious belief it is scarcely ever 
the majority of men, far less all men, who are usually 
right. On the contrary, the minorities have time on 
their side; and it is no argument, for instance, for the 
truth of the Buddhist theory that it has always been 
professed by a larger number of people than the Chris- 
tian. Among the most " universal and catholic beliefs" 
have been an unquestioning faith in witchcraft and 
astrology ; though an influential minority of mankind 
has now finally rejected them both. It is quite open 
to argument that we may go so far as to say that what- 
soever has been universally believed among men, in 
matters of religion, is probably false. One of the many 
modern writers who follow the method we are discuss- 
ing, says plausibly enough that he desires to combine 
" the testimony rendered by man's spiritual facul- 
ties in different epochs and races concerning ques-- 
"tions on which these faculties are of necessity the 
"final appeal." 1 But the facts surely show that the 
testimony has been more often wrong than right. How- 
ever valuable the combination, or the comparison, of 
this testimony may be for historical purposes, it will 
disclose to us no infallible guide concealed behind the 
veil of multiform error. " I must think," says Dr. 
Legge, " that the comparative study of religions will 



Johnson, Oriental Keligions. India, Vol. i. p. 2. 



8 



rLA.CE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



"dissipate this imagination, and prove it to be an 
"unsubstantial hope." 1 Surely that is the correct 
view. And in any case, we shall not here conduct 
our inquiries with any such object, with any such hope. 
The task of the historian of religious belief is a much 
humbler one, simply to ascertain, if he can, the process 
by which men have come to believe as they do. 



These, then, being methods and objects which we 
shall endeavour not to follow or to seek, what is the 
purpose which a comparison of Buddhism with other 
religions may reasonably be expected to serve ? 

An illustration will perhaps make this clear. In the 
allied science of comparative philology, we find, firstly, 
that words in the more modern dialects of any family 
are derived, as far as possible historically, from words 
or roots in the older dialects; and, secondly, that 
general rules respecting the tendencies of the growth 
of language, and of vowel and consonantal change, are 
laid down as being of very general or even sometimes 
of universal application. It is quite true that (owing 
to the fact that only one branch of the subject — the 
Aryan branch — has been, as yet, at all completely 
worked out) most of the general rules or tendencies as 



Religions of China, p. 287. 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



9 



-yet discovered, either depend upon facts observed in, 
or are applicable only to, the Aryan field of language. 
Comparative philologists may have been too much 
given, perhaps, to regarding all questions of the science 
of language from an exclusively Aryan standpoint. 
But some progress has already been made in the obser- 
vation of tendencies which hold good among words and 
families of speech not related to one another. And it 
is precisely such general observations which are now, 
and will increasingly be, the most valuable results of 
philological research. 

So also in comparative mythology. "Who has not 
been charmed by the clear and unexpected light thrown 
from the poetry of the Vedas upon many of the myths 
most familiar to us in the literature of Greece and 
Rome ? But myths are not confined to the shores of 
the Mediterranean. Much of this curious phase of 
belief that is found there and elsewhere cannot be 
similarly explained by derivation from Yedic or other 
hymns. Even when it can, the difficulty has only been 
removed one stage further back. And the most valuable 
results of the study of comparative mythology depend 
upon the observation of those general tendencies which 
prevail in the growth of early beliefs of this kind 
common among men. 

In the same way it is such general tendencies as a 
right use of the comparative study of religious belief 



10 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 

will enable us to observe, which will be the most valu- 
able results of our inquiries. 



AVc must not hope, however, to find more than 
tendencies, to find laws in the scientific sense. The 
expression "Science of Religion" may be useful as a 
short phrase in which to sum up, or include, all our 
knowledge concerning religious beliefs. But if it ho 
intended to suggest that we have yet found, or can 
ever hope to find, such fixed rules in these matters as 
are laid down in the exact sciences, the expression 
Science of Religion must be admitted to be a misnomer. 
As the word science is most naturally and immediately 
referred to the exact sciences, it is unfortunate, to say 
the least, to talk as yet of a Science of Religion ; and 
the name will scarcely be appropriate till the word 
science has changed or enlarged its connotation. On 
the other hand, too, no generally accepted opinion is 
more fallacious than the frequently repeated dictum 
that " human nature is every where the same." Most 
especially on that side of their nature which we are 
here discussing, the religious side, men's nature differs 
greatly according to their different history, their dif- 
ferent surroundings, their different education. It is 
only under similar conditions that man's nature can be 
everywhere similar; and it is chiefly because those 



i)K VELOPEMENT OF EELIGIOTJS THOUGHT. 



11 



• conditions are never precisely the same, that it is im- 
possible to lay down any hard and fast rules of the 
developement (or the decay, as some prefer — it docs 
not matter which) of religious beliefs. 



Such being some of the cautions, as to both aim and 
method, which we ought carefully to bear in mind, 
when comparing the details of Buddhism with those of 
other systems, we should also never lose sight of the 
true position of Buddhism in the general religious 
history of India and of the world at large. 

Buddhism is one of the so-called "book religions." 
When we hear that it was founded some five hundred 
years before the birth of Christ, we are apt to think 
that it is very old, — as old, as primitive, as rudimen- 
tary, as the arts and sciences of those far-off times. 
But, comparatively speaking, it is one of the very 
latest products of the human mind. 

Our conceptions on this point are prone to be dark- 
ened hy the shortness of the period that has elapsed 
since the dawn of recorded history. It is true that 
throughout the world recorded history can only be said 
to begin with any completeness about five hundred 
years before the Christian era. Here and there in 
isolated places we have documentary evidence of the 
history of some few tribes for a period somewhat earlier. 



12 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



And from the oldest of these sources, and from still 
older documents that are not historical, Ave can conjec- 
ture, with more or less accuracy, certain general facts 
concerning' the history, for some still previous centuries, 
of those races among whom those sources were handed 
down. But aback of all these there stretches 
the long vista of unknown centuries which 
must form the background of the picture in which 
Buddhism should be presented to our minds, if we 
wish that picture to be drawn in true perspective. 

( lompared with what had been before the rise of Bud- 
dhism, the distance between ourselves and it vanishes 
away to insignificance ; and the first thing we have to 
do is to attempt as best we can to realize to ourselves 
the long developement of which it was the logically 
ultimate outcome, and, in a sense, the close. 

It is to be regretted that exigencies of time and space 
prevent this part of our subject being treated with 
anything like the extent which its importance demands. 
And all the more so, since the difficulty of the problem 
and the incertitude of our knoAvledge prevent the little 
that can be said from being said sharply and clearly. 
But it would add considerably to our difficulties in the 
subsequent part of this course;, if no foundation had 
been laid for our historical sketch by a description, 
however slight, of the growth of those ideas among 
which Buddhism was born. 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



Many centuries before the time of our earliest records, 
the parent race of the seven Aryan races — the Hindus, 
Persians, Greeks, Bomans, Kelts, Teutons and Sklaves 
— had passed through the earliest phases of its reli- 
gious beliefs. 

Attempts have been made with considerable success 
to argue from the words and beliefs found, in their 
earliest records, to have been common afterwards among 
one or more of the seven races, to the religious ideas 
which must have existed in the parent stock. Made 
with clue caution, such inferences are fair. - At the 
time when their earliest records were composed, there 
was no likelihood of any direct borrowing between the 
several races, and the results are confirmed by our 
knowledge of early religious beliefs elsewhere. 

It is sufficient for our purpose that the beliefs of the 
remote ancestors of the Buddhists may be summed up 
as having resulted from that curious attitude of mind 
which is now designated by the word Animism. They 
had come to believe, most probably through the influ- 
ence of dreams, in the existence of souls, or ghosts, or 
spirits, inside their own bodies ; and they had not yet 
learned to discriminate in this respect between them- 
selves and the other animals and objects around them 
which seemed to be possessed of power and movement. 
The Vedas, though they are our earliest records, show 
us only a very advanced stage in the beliefs result- 



u 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



ing from this simple and unquestioning faith, so widely 
diffused among all races and ages of mankind. The 
move powerful spirits or ghosts supposed to dwell in 
various external things, have already become in the 
Vedas objects of greater fear than the rest ; they arc 
endowed with higher attributes, are surrounded by 
deeper mystery, and have been promoted to be kings, 
as it were, among the gods. These were chiefly the 
spirits supposed to animate the sky and the heavenly 
bodies; and the promotion of these spirits had so 
dimmed the comparative glory of the rest, that the 
Animism had become in the Vedas what we call Poly- 
theism. 

But the newer stage of belief was no contradiction 
of the older ; it was simply a further advance along the 
same lines, and resting on the same foundations. The 
lesser spirits, or at least most of them, survived as naiads 
and dryads, spirits of the streams and trees, demons, 
goblins, ogres, spirit-messengers, and fairies, good or 
bad. And the old belief in mysteriously animated 
objects survived, too, in the belief in magic, in sorcery, 
and in charms of various kinds. 

And here it may be pointed out that it is claiming 
too much for the Rig Ycda to maintain that it has pre- 
served for us the whole of the ancient Indian thought 
on theological matters. Precisely because the lesser 
spirits had become, comparatively speaking, of less 
account, because each one of them was believed in and 



DEVELOPEMENT OE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



15 



feared by fewer mortals, we must expect to find them 
less mentioned and less described in the collection of 
the hymns to the supposed greater spirits. But the 
less important beliefs played on the whole a perhaps 
greater part in the actual daily thoughts of most of the 
ordinary men of the Aryan tribes ; and we must com- 
plete the picture by the invaluable details preserved in 
the Atharva Veda, and also elsewhere surviving in the 
later literature. 



With regard to the internal spirits, the souls of men, 
the old Aryans believed that the soul survived after 
the body, which enclosed it, had passed away. They 
feared and worshipped the ghosts of departed ancestors, 
and did not realize as possible or probable any cessation 
of the life they expected beyond the grave. The good 
and brave and liberal enjoyed a new life of happiness 
in that neAV and spiritual body to which the ghost of 
the deceased changed or developed (or perhaps, for the 
point is not quite clear, which was inhabited by the 
spirit) after death. Whether they clearly held that 
the future life was never-ending, whether the belief 
in immortality Avas actually held by all, is very 
doubtful. There is all the difference between think- 
ing of a future life without raising the question of its 
duration, and firmly believing that it would never end. 
But at least some of the more highly gifted, the more 



16 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



ardent among the later Vedic poets, looked after death 
for an immortal life of sensual bliss. 1 On the other 
hand, the Lad, the false, the stingy, enter into the 
nethermost deep of darkness. Of a life before this one, 
or of a return of the soul to this world, either as man 
or animal, there seems to have then been no suspicion ; 
though there arc one or two late passages which sug- 
gest the possibility of a departed spirit being recalled 
to life and to security here on earth. 2 



In their most essential elements these ideas of the 
future life were not only Vcdic, they were the common 
inheritance of the seven Aryan races; they were re- 
tained among the Persians — the brother-race of the 
Hindus — in a form strengthened, no doubt, and altered 
on the same lines, but very little modified by opposing 
conceptions. And when we find that the oldest He- 
brew books show little trace of that belief in an immor- 
tal future life which became so common among the Jews 
after the captivity in Mesopotamia, and that no other 
Semitic tribes seem to have originated the idea, the 
question springs spontaneously to one's mind, whether 
we have not met, in these ancient Aryan beliefs, with 

1 Rig Veda ix. 113, 7—11 ; Atharva Veda iv. 34, 2—4, and other 
passages, quoted in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. v. pp. 306 foil. 

2 Rig Veda x. 58, 1, x. 60, 10, loc. cit. p. 313. 



DEVELOPEJIENT OF EELTGIOUS THOUGHT. 



17 



the foundation-stone of a far-spreading edifice, of that 
all-powerful belief in the immortality of the soul whit li 
has played so mighty a part in the influences which 
have shaped the Europe of to-day. 



But in India, through the following centuries, there 
was gradually, very gradually, brought about a curious 
change in these fundamental articles of religious belief. 
When Buddhism arose, the accepted and general belief 
was that the souls of men had previously existed 
inside the bodies of other men, or gods, or animals, or 
had animated material objects ; and that when the] T 
left the bodies they now inhabited, they would enter 
upon a new life, of a like temporary nature, under one 
or other of these various individual forms — the parti- 
cular form being determined by the goodness or evil 
of the acts done in the present existence. Life, there- 
fore, was held to be a never-ending chain, a never- 
ending struggle. For however high the conditions to 
which any soul had attained, it was liable, by one act 
of wickedness, or even of carelessness, to fall again 
into one or other of the miserable ^states. 

There was a hopelessness about this creed in direct 
contrast to the childlike fulness of hope, the strong 
desire for life, that is so clearly revealed in the Yedas. 
Very probably the great mass of the people, occupied 

c 



18 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 

in their daily duties, their worldly hopes and fears, did 
not allow themselves to be much influenced by this 
new creed of transmigration ; but the more their atten- 
tion was drawn to religious matters — and at some crisis 
or another of his life this may have happened to most 
of them— a vague feeling of helplessness and hopeless- 
ness must havo obtained the mastery over them. 



A way of escape had indeed been found. A modi- 
fication of the theory of external spirits had pointed 
the way to this new refuge for the internal spirit, for 
each man's soul or self. There were too many earnest 
and intellectual minds among the then Hindus for 
Polytheism, tempered only by a subservient Animism, 
to remain supreme. As among the Jews and among 
the Greeks, so also among the Hindus, there were not 
a few to whom a unity underlying the many personified 
forms of external nature became gradually more and 
more visible. Among the Jews, the corresponding 
belief— the belief in one God — had already, about the 
time of the rise of Buddhism, gained a complete hold 
of the general population. Among the Greeks, the 
belief in 6 Geos, or rather in a to Geiov, as distinct from 
the belief in ol 0<6i, in Deity as distinct from the older 
deities, was confined mostly to those educated in. or 
under the immediate influence of, the schools of philo- 



DEV* ELOPEMENT OF .RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 19 



sophy. And so in the valley of the Ganges, it was 
only in the schools of the philosophizing ascetics, mostly 
but by no means exclusively Brahmans, that a unity, 
not indeed a personal God in the modern sense, but a 
neuter, cold and passionless First Cause, was conceived 
to be the source, the abiding support, of all phenomena. 



In speaking of these later beliefs, so nearly related 
to our own, it is difficult to make use of terms not 
liable to much misconception. It has been maintained 
that the Jewish belief in an Evil Spirit, side by side 
with the Great Spirit, and in subordinate angels and 
archangels, good and bad, -is sufficient to render inac- 
curate any description of them as Monotheists. It is 
probable that few, if any, of the Grecian thinkers 
believed in the existence of one external Spirit only, 
to the complete exclusion of all minor deities. And 
certainly even the most advanced among the pre-Bud- 
dhistic Hindus never became what would now be called 
pure Theists. 

They could better be called Pantheists, but even 
this expression can only be used of them in a sense not 
applicable to the followers of the Pantheism which has 
grown out of Christian theology or Greek philosophy. 
The Indian philosophers continued to believe in the 
souls or spirits supposed to exist inside the human 

c 2 



20 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 

body, and in all the hierarchy of the external spirits, 
the gods of rivers, trees and pools, of earth and sky 
and sea, and all their numerous progeny. But they 
held all these, and all matter, to ho the mere sportive 
emanations of a supreme primordial Spirit, who was 
unconscious, and who was led by causes bcj'ond his 
(or rather its) control to manifest itself in all those 
temporary and changing forms which make up this 
world and its inhabitants. All things are unreal. All 
being, save the One, is evanescent. And as to the 
si mis of men, though they are condemned to wander 
for ever and ever from shape to shape, from labour to 
trouble, their existence is not independent; they are 
not self-existent, and they can defeat the unlucky 
action of the God that gave birth to their individuality 
by certain ceremonies, or a certain kind of knowledge, 
held, by various opposing schools, to be able to destroy 
again that individuality by bringing about the return 
of the spark to the central fire, by the absorption of 
the human soul in that Great Soul which was supposed 
to be the only real existence. 

Can any of the many different speculations which 
have grown up in Christian soil be said to be the same 
as this hopeless creed ? Can these Indian notions be 
accurately described or correctly summed up by any of 
our Western names ? We may admit that the general 
course of speculation has run along parallel lines in the 
valley of the Ganges and in the basin of the Meditcr- 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



21 



ranean. But modern Pantheism lias arisen after the 
stage of those polytheistic beliefs of which Indian 
Pantheism was the outgrowth and the explanation : 
and European Pantheism, whether Greek, mediaeval 
or modern, is always, or very nearly always, entirely 
uninfluenced — I may venture to say, untarnished — by 
the longing to escape from life. If we, then, use the 
words Pantheism or Monotheism when describing 
Hindu thought, we should never forget that, though 
similar in many respects, they are yet quite as different 
in other respects from the Pantheisms and Monotheisms 
of the West. 



In this curious despair of life, we must, I think, 
admit the power of an influence the very existence of 
which it has become the fashion to deny. Mr. Buckle 
may have wished to push the influence of climate too 
far, to regard it too much as an explanation sufficient 
of itself. But when we find this despair of life con- 
spicuously absent not only in the Yedas, but in the 
earliest records of the other Aryan races, and in all the 
schemes of life that have obtained currency in more 
temperate climes, we cannot omit to notice the fact 
that it sprang up in India after the Aryan tribes had 
descended into the valley of the Ganges, and had been 
long under the influence of the oppressive heat to which 
they had not been accustomed, and from which there 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



was no escape. It is true that World-weariness, "Welt- 
schmerz, is not unknown in Europe. But the fact 
that it has arisen mostly at a certain period of life 
shows it to be here also at least in part due to physical 
causes. Few individuals in temperate climes are per- 
manently pessimists; and such pessimist philosophy 
us docs exist is more theoretical than practical, and* 
lias never obtained so complete a hold of all the more 
thoughtful minds as it had in India at the time of the 
rise of Buddhism. 



It is possible to argue that this weariness of life was 
due to the system of caste, a yoke which seems intole- 
rable to modern European minds. But the evils of 
the system are often exaggerated, the immutability of 
its rules is often overstated ; and in those early times, 
when the system was only arriving at complete deve- 
lopement, it is probable that the people themselves by 
no means felt its yoke so heavy as it is commonly sup- 
posed to be. 

As is now well knoAvn, there is no mention of caste 
in the oldest hymns of the Vedas. But the bitter con- 
tempt of the Aryans for foreign tribes, their domineer- 
ing and intolerant spirit, their strong antipathies of 
race and of religion, are in harmony with the special 
features of caste as afterwards established. It is natural 
that, as the bitter struggles against the non- Aryan 



DEVELOPEMENT OE KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



23 



peoples died away, the domineering spirit of the con- 
querors should have lasted on, and have found vent for 
itself in the pride of class distinctions. It is accordingly 
only in some of the latest Vedic hymns that we find 
the first mention of those four classes — the Brahmans, 
the Bajanyas, the Vaisyas and the Sudras — to which 
all the later castes have been subsequently traced back. 
Even then the division was as yet into classes, not into 
castes properly so called. And it is in the Brahmana 
literature that Ave come to the earliest passages in 
which exclusive privileges are claimed for the Erah- 
mans as priests, and for the nobles as entitled to receive 
the sacred unction. It seems certain that when the 
Brahmanas were first composed the barrier between all 
the higher classes had become impassable, or, in other 
words, that these classes had been hardened into castes. 

It is most probable that this momentous step followed 
upon, and was chiefly due to the previous establishment 
of, a similar hard and fast line preventing any one 
belonging to the non- Aryan tribes from intermarrying 
with an Aryan family, or being incorporated into the 
Aryan race. It was the hereditary disability the Aryans 
had succeeded in imposing upon races they despised, 
which, re-acting within their own circle, and strength- 
ened by the very intolerance that gave it birth, has 
borne such bitter fruit through so many centuries. 
But it is perhaps' scarcely surprising that the pride of 
race should have put an impassable barrier between 



24 



PLACE OP BUDDHISM I> T THE 



the warlike Aryans and the darker races whom they 
had conquered in so many fights. It is no isolated fact 
that pride of birth had led the nobles to separate them- 
selves from the mass of the people. It is not in India 
alone that the superstitious fears of all have yielded to 
the priesthood an unquestioned and profitable supre- 
macy. And there are proofs enough of the tendency 
of occupations, in the earlier stages of civilization, to 
become hereditary. 

The state of society in the valley of the Ganges at 
the time of the rise of Buddhism, was not so very dif- 
ferent from the state of society in other races at similar 
stages of their history. The hereditary priesthood, the 
exclusive privileges of the Brahuians, were, no doubt, 
as incontestable as the hereditary priesthood, and ex- 
elusive privileges of the corresponding classes in Judaea 
in the time of Christ. Superstitions regarding purity 
and impurity, which play so great a part elsewhere in 
the settlement of early religious and social customs, 
were held as strongly as among the Jews and Persians. 
And a few, but by no means all or the most important, 
of mens daily occupations had become confined to 
certain families, which were really castes in the modern 
sense. The larger divisions into classes had also already 
merged into castes ; intermarriages were no longer pos- 
sible except between equal ranks. No Kshatriya could 
any longer become a Brahman, far less one of the abo- 
riginal tribes enter into the social ranks of the sacred 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 25 

Aryans. But the elaborate distinctions of the modern 
castes were then unknown; the stringent penalties, 
which in after times followed on the breach of caste 
rules, had not yet been heard of; and the commonest 
modes of livelihood, agriculture and trade, were fol- 
lowed, even more indiscriminately than now, by all 
alike. 



The worst part of the circle of caste ideas was un- 
doubtedly the supremacy accorded to the Brahmans by 
birth. But even this might have caused little practical 
harm had it not been for the soul-theory, and for the 
curious belief in the efficacy of the rites and ceremonies 
they could perform, on which that supremacy rested. 
These beliefs, perhaps a necessary, certainly an almost 
universal stage in the developement of religion, had a 
most baleful influence on the every-day life of the 
people among whom Buddhism was first proclaimed. 
The power of the gods was to them a very real thing. 
The influence of the stars, and the good or ill luck of 
the days on which the various customary ceremonies 
were to be performed, or the various businesses of life 
were to be set on foot, were to them of very real 
importance. There was indeed very little, if any, of 
what we should now call prayer. But the gods could 
be compelled by sacrifices rightly offered, by hymns 
properly intoned, to favour the fortunate worshipper ; 



2G 



PLACE OF J5UDDHISM IN THE 



and charms rightly recited, horoscopes correctly cast, 
talismans whose power had been already tested, could 
ensuro the results which men had most at heart The 
happiness of the soul, too, in its next birth depended 
upon the due performance of settled ceremonies; and 
for all these things the help of the Brahmans was 
required, and had to be richly paid. It would be use- 
less to attempt to disguise the evils resulting from 
such a state 1 of things. But wo should never forget 
that the evil was due, not to the depravity of the 
Brahmans, but to the beliefs of the people; and that 
those beliefs were the natural outcome and result of 
the previous stages of belief through which they had 
passed during the long ages of their previous history. 



Buddhism was by no means the first effort that had 
been made to change this condition of things. There 
was absolute freedom of thought in ancient India. 
The Brahmans themselves were often the leaders in 
enunciating new views, which would elsewhere have 
been condemned as heterodox ; and men of other castes 
Avere allowed to set up as teachers of systems really 
incompatible with the inherited beliefs. Invaluable 
records of this philosophical and sophistical tendency 
of the Brahmans, to which some reference has already 
been made, is preserved in the Upanishads, — in many 



■HEVELOPEMENT OP RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



27 



respects the most interesting portion of the literature 
of pre-Buddhistic India that has come down to ns. 
And the lineal descendants of these schools of thought 
are the well-known six systems of Hindu philosophy, 
one of which, the Yeclantist, has acquired so deep an 
influence over all the later varieties of Hindu thought. 
Of the then opinions of the thinkers of other sects we 
have no records. But their descendants no doubt 
greatly influenced the later modifications of Buddhism, 
and the sect now called Jains has probably preserved 
the teachings of others. 

One distinguished scholar, Professor Jacobi, has 
supposed that the Buddhist theory of the Buddhas 
was derived from a corresponding theory of the fore- 
runners of the Jains ; and it is common ground to 
many writers on the history of religion that Gotama 
borrowed largely from Ivapila, the reputed founder of 
one of these early systems, the Sankhya (or numeral) 
philosophy. But I would venture to enter a protest 
against such arguments. The extant books of the 
Jains are many centuries later than the Pali Pitakas. 
There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the 
writings of the six schools of philosophy are pre- 
Buddhistic. Such similarity as really exists between 
any of these works and the Pali Pitakas may perhaps 
be due to a common origin; it is quite as likely that 
the Buddhist ideas are the originals ; and in any case 
it is to works knoAvn to exist before the time of Gotama 3 



28 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IX THE 



and especially to the earlier TJpanisliads, that we must 
look it' we wish to discover what Indian philosophy 
really was before the advent of Buddhism. 



Now unfortunately the TJpanisliads, by different 
authors and of different dates, are as difficult to appre- 
ciate and to understand as the earliest philosophers of 
the Greeks, and for a similar reason. They present 
to \is, not a finished system, but the beginnings of 
thought, the vague struggles of earnest minds first 
grappling with the great problems of life. But one 
idea recurs throughout their long, and usually tedious, 
verbiage, and that is the belief that there; was some- 
thing far better, far higher, far more enduring, than 
the right performance of sacrifice; that the object of 
the wise man should be to know, inwardly and con- 
sciously; the Great Soul of all ; and that by this know- 
ledge his individual soul would become united to the 
Supreme Being, the true and absolute Self. This 
was the highest point of the old Indian philosophy ; 
it was the ultimate outcome of the long history of the 
Aryan spirit-belief; and on those old lines, in that 
same direction, it is difficult to sec what farther step 
was even possible. 

The distinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was 
that it started on a new line, that it looked at the 
deepest questions men have to solve from an entirely 



DEVELOPEMEKT OP RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



20 



different standpoint. It swept away from the 
field of its vision the whole of the great sonl- 
theory which had hitherto so completely filled and 
dominated the minds of the superstitions and of the 
thoughtful alike. For the first time in the history of 
the world, it proclaimed a salvation which each man 
.could gain for himself, and by himself, in this world, 
during this life, without any the least reference to 
God, or to gods, either great or small. 

Like the TJpanishads, it placed the first importance 
on knowledge ; but it was no longer a knowledge of 
God, it was a clear perception of the real nature, as 
they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it 
added to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of 
purity, of courtesy, of uprightness, of peace, and of a 
universal love, "far-reaching, grown great, and beyond 
measure." 

The adherents of the new sect, as the Book of the 
Great Decease puts it, were to strive to be "full of 
"confidence, modest in heart, ashamed of wrong, full of 
" learning, strong in energy, active in mind, and full of 
" wisdom they were to " live in the practice, both in 
"public and private, of those virtues which, when 
"unbroken, intact, unspotted and unblemished, make 
"men free, and Avhich are untarnished by the belief in 
" the efficacy of any outward acts of ritual or ceremony, 
"by the hope of any kind of future life." 1 
1 See KIi. D., Buddhist SuttaS from the Pali, pp. 8, 10. 



30 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE 



We arc not called upon here to attempt any estimate, 
or to come to any conclusion, as to whether this new 
departure was or was not right, much less whether it 
is the only right one. What I venture to submit to 
you is merely that it is this new departure, this ignor- 
ing of the soul, which is the most important fact in tlie 
comparative study of Buddhism. Everywhere where 
the attitude of mind called Animism — the first attempt 
at science, as it is the first step in religion, for these 
meet together at the birth, just as they will kiss each 
other at the close of history — everywhere where Anim- 
ism has been permanently modified, it has been so by 
its developcmcnt into Polytheism; and this, though 
far from universal, is true not only of the seven Aryan 
races, but of Egypt, of North America and Mexico, of 
Arabia and Canaan, of China and Japan. Everywhere 
where philosophy — but this of course is comparatively 
seldom — has arisen in the midst of polytheists, it has 
perceived a unity behind the many, and has tended 
towards a more or less pantheistic Monotheism. 
Then, lastly — and this in only isolated cases — there has 
come a time when theological rivalries have lost their 
interest, and metaphysical discussions have lost their 
value ; when men have tried, with more or less success, 
to seek for the sum mum bonum in various systems 
of self-culture in which the gods are. practically dis- 
regarded, or quite left out of the account. 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 31 

Comtism, Agnosticism and Buddhism are, it is 
true, the only systems which have broken away, in 
the most uncompromising manner, from the venerable 
soul-theories which have grown out of the ancient 
Animism. But Stoicism, Vedantism, Confucianism and 
Deism, had come very near to the newer standpoint, 
and there is a whole side of Theism, and even of 
Christianity, which inculcates the same lesson. The 
kingdom of heaven that is within a man, the peace 
that passeth understanding, is the nearest analogue to 
the Buddhist Nirvana which I know of in Western 
thought ; and it is not the newer systems alone which 
insist upon the necessity of self-culture and of self- 
controL 

It may be added that each of these various systems 
can also be said, in one sense, to have practically failed. 
Stoicism, Christianity, Comtism, Confucianism, Bud- 
dhism and all the rest, have so far disappointed the 
hopes of their founders, and of their early disciples. 
Though alike in many essential points, they differ one 
from another, not only in details, but in other things 
which their followers hold to be of the first importance. 
And the reason why they differ is the one thing in 
which they are most essentially alike. Each — though 
this will be admitted of Christianity only by those who 
think that the history of Christianity should be treated 
by the same methods as the history of other religions — 
each is the natural outcome of an immeasurable past, 



32 



PLACE OF BUDDHISM TX THE 



in which ideas, closely related no doubt, but always 
different, have undergone very slow and very gradual 
changes in directions similar, though in no case quite 
the same. Each has carried into its sulution of the 
momentous problem it has had to face — and which 
each has faced with so great a degree of manfulnesi 
and earnestness — the inevitable influence of the long 
past it has inherited. Each, however widely it appealed 
to the people, however clear its repudiation of ranks 
and castes, however widely its doors stood open, has 
really been above the heads, beyond the grasp, of the 
general public of the nation among which it first 
appeared. And each, in putting new wine into the 
old bottles, in preserving many of the old phrases, has 
left a soil in which the old beliefs could again take 
root, and, nourished by the old ignorance and supersti- 
tion, could grow up as a rank vegetation to counteract, 
if not to choke, all that was most beneficial and most 
true in the newer teaching. 

We arc deeply moved as wc watch the representation 
by some powerful actor of the tragedy of the fall of some 
man or woman led on to destruction by the very con- 
ditions of their nature. How much greater the disaster 
when a whole nation, to -whom the doors of liberty 
have once been opened, closes them upon itself, and 
relapses into the bondage of delusions ! It would be 
hard to find, in the whole history of the world, a greater 
tragedy than that which was typified by the feast of 



DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



Jagan-nath. The number of deaths at that festival has 
doubtless been sometimes exaggerated, and I am quite 
aware that reasons can be given for the hideous cha- 
racter of the carvings on the triumphal car of Vishnu. 
But it is acknowledged that the temple at Purl had 
once been Buddhist, and that the very name Jagan- 
nath — now supposed to be an actual spirit, a form of 
Vishnu — is really nothing but a misapplied ancient 
epithet, the Pali Loka-natha, of the great thinker and 
reformer of India. We know that deaths did, and up 
to very modern times, in fact take place, and were sup- 
posed to secure a happy entrance of the "soul" into 
realms of delight in heaven. When we call to mind 
how the frenzied multitudes, drunk with the luscious 
poison of delusions from which the reformation they 
had rejected might have saved them, dragged on that 
sacred car, heavy and hideous with carvings of obscenity 
and cruelty, — dragged it on in the name of Jagan-nath, 
the forgotten teacher of enlightenment, of purity, and 
of universal love, while it creaked and crushed over 
the mangled bodies of miserable suicides, the victims 
of once exploded superstitions, — it will help us to 
realize how heavy is the hand of the immeasurable past ; 
how much more poAverful than the voice of the prophets 
is the influence of congenial fancies, and of inherited 
beliefs. 



D 



LECTURE II. 
THE PALI PITAKAS 



The belief of the orthodox Buddhists assigns the 
■w hole of the existing canonical books to the period 
immediately following the death of Gotama, and claims 
for them the sanction and authority, if not the author- 
ship, of the immediate disciples of the Buddha himself. 

It would be strange indeed if such a belief had not 
arisen. Many of the books purport to record the very 
Avords of the Master, or events in his life witnessed by 
his personal followers. There is no absolute statement 
in the books as to their date or authorship. Historical 
criticism was quite unknown in the early centuries of 
Buddhism, when men were concerned with matters 
they held to be vastly more important than exact state- 
ments of literary history. The tendency of the more 
devout minds among the early followers of Gotama 
would inevitably lead them to attach great importance 
to the books that had been handed down, and to assign 
to them therefore the highest possible antiquity. And 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



35 



when the idea that those very books had been in exist- 
ence shortly after the death of the Buddha had once 
gained ground, any one who denied or even doubted 
the fact would be regarded with dislike, and avoided 
as a dangerous person. 

But when impartial students, who are not orthodox 
Buddhists, come to read the Buddhist Scriptures in the 
light of the historical criticism which has grown up in 
modern times in Europe, and with historical rather than 
with religious objects in view, they perceive at once, 
from the internal evidence afforded by the books them- 
selves, that the orthodox opinion can no longer be 
maintained. It is quite clear that the literature has 
been of gradual growth, and that, though the books as 
we now have them contain a great deal of older mate- 
rial, some of it perhaps reaching back to a time even 
before the death of Gotama, they cannot have been put 
into their present shape till long after that event. 

When we attempt, however, to advance from this 
general proposition into more detailed statements, when 
we endeavour to form to ourselves any conception of 
the actual process by which the literature as a whole 
assumed its present form, we are beset by numerous 
difficulties. Those who have followed the course of 
speculation as to the origin and developement of the 
New Testament canon, or even only any one phase of 
it — such as the controversy raised by Strauss's work 
on the Life of Christ, the debate as to the authorship 

i> 2 



36 



THE PALI PITA KAS. 



of the Gospel according to John, or the discussion 
lid ween the author of "Supernatural Religion" and 
the Bishop of Durham- — will easily understand how 
this is. The kind of questions that arise, the kind of 
arguments to which appeal has to he made, are much 
the same in the case of both literatures. And in both 
cases the final decision is apt to depend on personal 
impressions, whose validity is very much open to 
dispute. 

It is true that Europeans come to the consideration 
of such questions, when they relate to the history of 
the Buddhist canon, with a degree of impartiality it 
would he unreasonable to expect, either from Christians 
or from Buddhists, when dealing with the literature of 
their own religion. There has therefore been much 
greater unanimity in such conclusions as have been 
already put forward by Pali scholars. But, on the 
other hand, we know as yet much less about the Bud- 
dhist canon than we know about the Christian. The 
Buddhist Pitakas, as their sacred books are collectively 
called, have not as yet been edited in anything like 
completeness. And wc know much less, from other 
sources, of the history of the time in which they arose, 
than we know of the corresponding period in Christian 
history. The result is, at present, a degree of uncer- 
tainty even greater, if possible, in the one case than in 
the other. It will be noticed, however, that the rea- 
sons for this uncertainty are very different in the two 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



37 



cases. The materials on which the final decision as to 
the history of the New Testament will ultimately rest 
must be substantially the same as those which are now 
accessible. The present variety of opinion would seem, 
therefore, to be very greatly due to mental differences 
in the investigators themselves. In the case of the 
Pali Pitakas, the materials on which our judgment 
must rest are still for the most part hidden away in 
MSS. ; and though these are now being published with 
encouraging rapidity, it would be unwise to occupy 
your time with conjectural discussions of questions 
which new evidence may any day decide for us one 
way or the other. I propose to confine myself, there- 
fore, to a simple statement of those facts which are 
already known, and to an illustration, by one or two 
examples, taken from the books themselves, of the 
character of the Pali Suttas. 



As is well known to you, the Buddha was not content 
merely to proclaim his new system to the world ; he 
founded an Order, the members of which were to carry 
out the system and hand it down to future generations. 
There immediately arose a number of questions regard- 
ing the regulation of that Order, which are represented 
to have been settled in his lifetime by the Master him- 
self — questions as to the admission to the Order; its 



38 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



internal government ; its property ; the relations of the 
members of the Order, male and female, to one another 
and to the outside world ; the result of a breach by any 
member of the Rules of the Order, and so on. 

The Order was a kind of republic. All proceedings 
were settled by resolutions agreed upon in regular 
meetings of its members, which were held subject to 
the observance of certain established regulations and 
to the use of certain fixed forms of words. The forms 
of words under which the meetings were conducted, 
and the resolutions passed, were called Kammavacas, 
that is, the "Words of the Act." They were naturally 
regarded with great reverence by the members of the 
Order, and they were handed down with scrupulous 
care. Though a large number of them have long ago 
fallen into abeyance, most, if not all, of them have 
survived down to the present day, and are extant in 
MSS. noAV existing in Buddhist countries, and some- 
times to be found in our public libraries. There is 
good reason for the hope that our collections of these 
formularies — no doubt the most ancient forms recorded 
in the world's literature for preserving order and deco- 
rum in the conduct of general assemblies — will even- 
tually be nearly, if not quite, complete. Only the 
other day, when a box of miscellaneous palm-leaf MSS. 
from different parts of India, now belonging to the 
Liverpool Free Library, was sent to me for report, I 
found among them a copy of several of these Kamma- 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



39 



vaeas hitherto unknown to be still extant; and there 
are other MSS. of similar contents in the British 
Museum, and in the National Library at Paris, which 
have not yet been thoroughly examined. 

The general outline of all these formularies is the 
same in all cases, and one example will suffice as a 
sample of all. 

After a layman entered the Order, he often wished 
to choose a new "name, or epithet, bearing some refer- 
ence to his new aim of life — a custom which may well 
have arisen or received encouragement from the fact 
that the ordinary names in use "in the world" con- 
tained the name of a god, or otherwise implied an 
acknowledgment of the soul-theory which every mem- 
ber of the Order was supposed to have abandoned. If 
a member desired thus to change his name, he would 
thrice state, formally, at a meeting of the Order, his 
desire to do so. Some learned and respected member 
would then on his behalf address the meeting thus : 

"Let the venerable assembly hear me ! Our Brother 
"A. B. requests permission to assume the name of 
"CD. If the time is now meet for the assembly to 
" do so, the assembly will authorize our Brother A. B. 
" to assume the name C. D. Such is the proper course 
" in such a case. 

"If any venerable member assent to permission 
" being granted to our Brother A. B. to assume the 
"name C. D., let him keep silence. If any venerable 
" member doth not assent, let him now speak." 



40 



THE PALI TITAKAS. 



Should no one speak on the opposite side, he would 
then continue : 

" The assembly authorizes A. B. to assume the name 
"CD. Therefore is the assembly silent. Thus do I 
•• understand." 

With these words, what we should call the motion 
(the natti) is considered to have been carried. The 
only amendment considered possible is apparently a 
direct negative ; and there is no counting of votes, for 
no resolution is passed unless the meeting is unani- 
mously in favour of it. 

It will be noticed that no such officer as president or 
chairman is referred to. Whether there usually was 
one in ancient times we do not know; but in the few 
cases in which the use of these simple ceremonies — the 
only kind of ritual in use among orthodox Buddhists — 
still survives, it is the custom for the senior member 
present to preside over the meeting. 

All the Kammavacas relate to the application of 
Rules already established to particular places, times or 
persons. They do not contemplate the discussion of 
any changes in the Rules themselves, nor of any points 
in doctrine, in discipline, or in the system of self- 
culture. We hear of such points being discussed in 
a conversational way in informal meetings, and even 
sometimes in actual assemblies of the Order, but the 
Kammavacas do not refer to them. 



THE PALI PITAEAS. 



41 



The Rules themselves, which, were to be carried out, 
wherever possible, by such Kammavacas, are very 
few and simple. The object of joining the Order was 
supposed to be the attainment, in part or in whole, of 
the state of mental and moral culture called Arahat- 
ship. This was, of course, entirely a personal affair, 
and the matters to be settled by rule were only such 
as would naturally arise in a body of men following no 
worldly occupation, practically communists in respect 
of such property as the Order could possess, and hold- 
ing no religious services and engaging in no prayers 
(in the Christian sense) of any kind at all. 

Among the most important of the Rules are those 
concerning the holding of Uposatha, a regular meet- 
ing of the Order, the time of which was fixed, like 
the Sabbath, by the changes of the moon. At those 
meetings there was recited a work called the Pati- 
mokkha, literally the " Disburdenment," a list of 
offences against ordinary morality, and against deco- 
rum in outward behaviour, by confession of which, 
guilty members of the Order could " disburden" them- 
selves — that is, I think, in a double sense, both subjec- 
tively and in reference to their standing in the Order. 

The other Rules deal exclusively with admission to 
the Order; the duties of seniors towards juniors, and 
vice versa ; the yearly change of residence during the 
rainy season, and the holding of a ceremony called 
Pavarana at its close; the use of various things 



42 



THE PALI TITAKAS. 



deemed to be luxuries ; the question of dress ; the 
validity of formal resolutions of Order; the maintc- 

i 

nance of discipline; the rules of hospitality; the conduct 
of the brethren and sisters to each other ; and a few 
sanitary regulations and other miscellaneous points of 
minor importance. 

Now one great division of the Buddhist Scriptures 
— the Vinaya Pitaka — is nothing else than what we 
should now call a text-book or manual of these various 
regulations and of the resolutions relating to them. And 
it is divided into three Parts: 1, the Khandakas, or 
"Chapters," containing the Rules; 2, the Sutta-vib- 
haijga, or "Exposition of the Patimokkha," contain- 
ing a commentary on the so-called list of offences above 
mentioned; and 3, the Parivara-patha, or "Appendix," 

a sort of index and resume* of the other two. 
« 

The last of these three, the " Appendix," is, as you 
would naturally suppose, much later than the others, 
and, compared with them, of little independent value. 
The other two form an edition, evidently drawn up 
some considerable time after the formation of the Order, 
of the then existing regulations. In this edition, 
each separate regulation or offence is preceded by 
an introduction giving an account of the occasion on 
which the Buddha himself is said to have laid down 
or declared it ; and is followed by what we should now 
call notes, setting forth exceptions, consecrucnces, appli- 
cations, and so on. Among these notes, I will mention 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



43 



in passing that we find the whole of an ancient com- 
mentary on the Patimokkha, which must, of course, 
have been already in existence when the present 
"edition" was compiled. 

No one is mentioned as the author of this edition 
of the Eules of the Buddhist Order; and indeed it 
probably had no author in our modem sense of that 
word. It is merely the last form reached by a lite- 
rature which grew up in a gradual way. As to date, 
the great bulk of it must be older than the 
year 350 B.C. It received, however, its last touches 
about a century later ; and it contains also some por- 
tions — such as the actual statement of the primary 
Eules, and of the various offences, and of the forms of 
the Kammavacas — which may even reach back to the 
lifetime of the Buddha himself. In other words, these 
books were in existence, practically as we now have 
them, within about 150 years after the time of Go tarn a; 
and they grew up out of older material, parts of which 
they have preserved intact. It will be seen below 
that a similar statement applies also to the rest of 
the books in the Pali Pitakas. And amid the chaos 
which still reigns in the chronology of Indian lite- 
rature it is a great gain to be able to fix the date 
of so important a literature within a so narrow limit 
of time. 

This conclusion as to the age of the Yinaya Pitaka 
depends on a number of considerations which it would 



44 TIIE PALI PITAKAS. 

take a very considerable time — certainly the time 
allotted to the rest of this course of Lectures — to set 
out clearly and fully. The whole argument is much 
too intricate even to be summarized to advantage. 
And there arc other matters, of greater interest from 
the point of view from which these Lectures arc deli- 
vered, which demand our notice. I will only say, 
therefore, that the conclusions, as far as I have stated 
them, are accepted by all Pali scholars; and that the 
details may be found in the Introduction to Dr. Olden- 
berg's edition of the whole text of the Vinaya Pitaka 
(w here the greater portion of the argument was first 
put forth), and in the Introduction to a complete trans- 
lation of the Patimokkha and of the Khandakas, which 
Dr. Qldenberg and myself are conjointly preparing for 
the series of translations from the Sacred Books of the 
East now being published at Oxford. These trans- 
lations will consist of four volumes, of which the first, 
containing the Patimokkha, is already published ; the 
second is passing through the press ; and the other two 
will appear at intervals of six months, so that the whole 
will be accessible to English readers before the close of 
next year. 



The books which treat of the Buddhist Dhamma, 
that is to say, of its ethics and philosophy, and of its 
system of self-culture, will probably be considered by 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



45 



most to be of greater interest than those containing the 
regulations of the Order. They are divided, in a pas- 
sage in one of the Ivhandakas just referred to, into five 
Nik ay as, or Collections, the whole of which have come 
down to us, though they exist as yet for the most part 
only in manuscript. It is the first four of these five 
Nikayas (the Digha, Majjhima, Sarjyutta, and 
Arjguttara Nikayas) that contain the writings well 
known to you under the name of Suttas. 

Of these Suttas, those in the first two Mkayas 
contain the whole of the Dhamma considered in a 
series of long and short conversations, the principal 
interlocutor being usually Gotama himself, but occa- 
sionally Sariputta, or some other of his principal dis- 
ciples. And you will be able to judge of the style and 
tone of these conversations from the two examples of 
them which will be presently laid before you. 

The Suttas, in the third Nikaya, give the same doc- 
trines and in very much the same words, but in a 
different arrangement. 

You will easily understand that it is often very diffi- 
cult to gather from a series of dialogues the whole of 
the Buddha's teaching on any one point. As in the case 
of the Socratic Dialogues, to which these are in many 
respects very similar, opinions' on the same or nearly 
allied points are found in many different Suttas ; and 
the names of the dialogues, often merely proper names, 
are very little guide to their actual contents. To 



46 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



gather together, therefore, a complete statement of 
early Buddhist teaching on any question, it would be 
necessary to consult the whole of the dialogues in the 
first two Nikayas, and to compare and combine the 
various utterances. 

It is from this point of view that the Sanyutta 
Nikaya — literally, ''The Collection of Linked, or 
Arranged, Treatises" — has been made. In it all the 
paragraphs relating to any one subject are brought 
together, independently of the conversational form in 
which they are supposed to have been first delivered, 
and in which they appear in the two former Collections. 

The question, then, naturally suggests itself, Which is 
the older form? Are the conversations built up out 
of the arranged treatises, or are these latter extracted 
from the conversations? To this question, no definite 
answer can as yet be given. TVe do not as yet know 
even whether the substance of the whole of the para- 
graphs in the third Xikaya will eventually be found 
in the first two ; and it would be useless to debate pro- 
babilities on the scanty evidence at our command. 



The fourth Nikaya, the Arjguttara, contains once 
more very much the same matter, but again in a dif- 
ferent order. 

Tv~e have already had occasion incidentally to notice 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



47 



how important is the place which numbers occupy 
in the statements of Buddhist truth. The " Noble 
Path" is eight-fold, and is divided into four stages, 
during which ten San yoj anas, or fetters, have to be 
broken. The Avisdom to be attained by one walking in 
the path is of seven kinds; his spiritual powers, or 
senses, are five in number ; and the struggle he has to 
carry on against his besetting weaknesses is divided 
into four aspects. In the same way, other parts of the 
Buddhist system are divided into classes of two, three, 
or more connected ideas. 

But it must not be supposed that number played 
such a part in the early Buddhist philosophy as it 
played about the same time in the Pythagorean. These 
numbers are merely aids to memory, and have no 
mystical meaning. They should be compared rather 
with similar enumerations in early and mediaeval Chris- 
tianity, some of which are still familiar to us, such as 
the four gospels, the seven deadly sins, the eight 
cardinal virtues, the ten commandments, the twelve 
apostles, and so on. 

It is with reference to this numerical statement of 
Buddhist ideas that the Arjguttara Mkaya is arranged. 
All the classes containing only one thing are treated 
of in the first book, all the clyads in the second, all the 
triads in the third, and so on. And it may be said of 
this Nikaya, as of the last, that its contents, which often 
consist of the very words found in the conversational 



48 



THE TALI FITAKAS. 



Xikayas, may either have heen derived from them, or 
have existed before them. 



None of these Four Great Collections, it will be 
seen, treats of only one subject. Each of them contains 
practically the whole of the Buddhist teaching. It is 
unlikely that any one point is exclusively treated by 
any one of them. And they are all divided into Suttas, 
each conversation of the first two being called a Sutta 
(or a Suttanta, as the older phraseology had it), and 
each different statement in the two latter being also 
called a Sutta, though these last Suttas are of course 
much shorter than the others. 

The last of the Xikayas, on the other hand, consists 
of fifteen miscellaneous books of poetry, legends, &c, 
very much more like our modern books, and, for that 
very reason, probably later than the Great Collections 
of the Suttas. There was from very early times a 
difference of opinion among orthodox Buddhists as to 
the exact number of books which ought to be included 
in this division — a difference of opinion which would 
scarcely have been possible had all the books contained 
in it been as old as the Vinaya and the Suttas. Pro- 
bably the number of writings in this miscellaneous 
collection was varied from time to time, chiefly by 
additions made to it. 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



49 



At a period not yet determined, but probably some 
centuries after the death of Gotama, there came into 
use another division of the whole literature into three 
Pitakas, literally "Baskets," meaning, I think, Bodies 
of Tradition. 1 The first of these three was the Vinaya 
Pitaka, as above described ; the second was the Sutta 
Pitaka, consisting of the four great collections of the 
Suttas ; and the third, containing the books of the fifth 
Nikaya and seven other prose works, was called col- 
lectively the Abhidhamma Pitaka. 

There has been much misconception as to this third 
name. It has been explained as meaning metaphysics ; 
but so far as anything is as. yet known of the Abhi- 
dhamma books, they are by no means more meta- 
physical than the other parts of the Pitakas. There is 
indeed but very little metaphysics in early Buddhism, 
and "Abhidhamma" would seem to bear much more 
the relation to "Bkamma" which "by-law" bears to 
" law," than that which " metaphy sics " bears to " phy- 
" sics." The so-called Bigha-bhanaka, that is, those 



1 Mr. Trenckner suggests, in his Pali Miscellany, p. 68, that 
baskets may have been used, when wheelbarrows were unknown, in 
excavating ground, and may have been passed from hand to hand, 
as fire-buckets now are. And he quotes two interesting passages from 
the Majjhima ]S T ikaya, in which the Brahman are ridiculed as hand- 
ing down their doctrines "basket-wise" (pitaka-sampadaya). 
But the earliest use of the word by Buddhists when speaking of 
their own books is very much later than the canonical books them- 
selves. See, further, Appendix VIII. 

E 



50 THE TALI TITAKAS. 

members of the Order whose duty it was to repeat 
and hand down the Dlgha Nikaya, included in the 
Abhidhamma Pitaka even the books of lighter litera- 
ture, poetry, legends, and the like, which form the 
fifth Nikaya. Could they have done so if the word 
Abhidhamma hud conveyed to the early Buddhists 
exclusively fche idem of what we now call metaphysics? 

This use of the term Abhidhamma Pitaka has the 
advantage of confining the term Sutta Pitaka to those 
four Collections which do actually consist of Suttas. 
But another ancient school, that of the repeaters of the 
Majjhima'Nikaya, include the fifth Nikaya with the 
four others in the Sutta Pitaka, and confine the term 
Abhidhamma Pitaka to the seven prose works, supple- 
mentary to the Suttas, above referred to. These, 
like the fifteen books of the fifth Nikaya, arc pro- 
bably each the work of a single author, and arc to be 
distinguished from the fifteen chiefly by the fact that 
they deal rather with questions of doctrine than with 
poetry or legend. All these twenty-two works, form- 
ing the Abhidhamma Pitaka, were probably in exist- 
ence before the end of the third century before the 
Christian era. The four great collections of the Suttas 
were no doubt much older, and the more important of 
them were as old, if not older, than the date assigned 
above to the Yinaya Pitaka. I must refer you for a 
detailed discussion of this question to the Introduction 
to my translation of the longest of these older Suttas, 



THE TALI PITA K AS. 



51 



the Maha-parinibbana Sutta, in Vol. XT. of the Sacred 
Books of the East, and invite your attention now to 
the actual contents of these ancient writings. 



The method of composition employed in the older 
Suttas will best be understood by the examples above 
referred to. Let us take, as a first instance, the 

ASSALAYANA SUTTA 

OP THE 

Majjhima Nikata. 1 

It opens by describing how a number of Brahmans 
at Savatthi were trying to find some ona who could 
controvert the opinion put forward by Gotama, that all 
the four castes were equally pure. In their difficulty 
they apply to a young and distinguished scholar, named 
Assalayana, whom they think equal to the contest. 
He objects that Gotama is a dhamma-vadi, one who 
reasons according to the truth (not, that is, on th,v 
basis of the authority of the Yedas, or of tradition), 
and that those who reason thus are difficult to over- 
come. However, after repeated solicitation, he reluc- 
tantly consents to their request, goes to the place 

1 It has been edited by Professor Pischel of Kiel (Chemnitz, 
1880), with an English version. It is not the third Sutta of tho 
Nikaya, as ho states in his preface, but the third Sutta in the 
Brahmana Vagga, that is, the ninety-third in the Nikaya. 

E 2 



52 



THE PALT riTVKAS. 



where Gotaraa was staying, and after exchanging with 
him greetings of civility and courtesy, takes a scat by 
his side. Then he asks : 

"The Brahmans, Gotama, say thus: 'The Brah- 
" • mans arc the best caste (literally, the best colour): 
"•every other caste is inferior. The Brahmans are 
" ' the white caste : every other caste is black. The 
" 1 Brahmans alone are pure : those who arc not Brah- 
" ' mans arc not pure. The Brahmans are the (only) 
'•'real sons of Brahma, born fiom his mouth, sprung 
" ' from Brahma, created by Brahma., heirs of Brahma.' 
"But what do you. Sir. say about this?" 

Then the Buddha asks him whether the wives of the 
Brahmans are not subject to all the ills and disabilities 
of child-birth to which other women arc subject. 

Assalayana is obliged to confess that this is so, and 
that the Brahmans put forward their claims in spite of 
this. 

The Buddha then, applying our modern comparative 
method of inquiry, asks whether in adjacent countries, 
such as Bactria and Afghanistan, there arc not differ- 
ences of colour similar to those between the Brahmans 
and other castes, and yet in those countries whether 
slaves cannot become masters, and masters become 
slaves. 

Again Assalayana confesses the fact, and that the 
Brahmans put forward their claims in spite of it. 
Then Gotama goes on to ask: "How think you, Assa- 



THE PALI PITAEAS. 



53 



" layana — a man who is a murderer, a thief, a libertine, 
"a liar, a slanderer, violent or frivolous in speech, 
"covetous, malevolent, given to false doctrine — will 
"such an one, if he be a Khattiya, or a Vessa, or a 
" Suclcla, be born after death, when the body is dis- 
solved into some unhappy state of misery and woe, 
" but not if he be a Brahman ?" 

Assalayana replies that the Brahman is in this 
respect exactly on a par with the others. 

Gotama then proceeds to put the contrary case, when 
Assalayana declares that those who do the contrary 
of all these evil things are equally re-born into some 
happy state in heaven, whether they are Brahmans or 
whether they are not. 

Gotama asks what force or what comfort there can 
then be in the claim to especial purity which the Brah- 
mans make. But he carries the argument still further. 
"What think you, Assalayana, is it the Brahman 
"alone who is able, in this land of ours, to cultivate 
"friendliness, kindliness, charitable feelings; or can 
"the Khattiya, the Vessa and the Sudda do so too?" 

And when Assalayana acknowledges that they are 
all equal in this respect, Gotama compels him to grant 
also that they are equally pure in their bodies, and that 
the flame kindled by an outcast by means of two pieces 
of wood belonging to a dog's drinking vessel or a pig- 
sty, will light a sacred fire as shining and beaming 
and bright, and as good for sacrificial purposes, as a 



54 



THE PALI PITAZAS. 



flame kindled by a Brahman or a Khattiya by means 
of sweet-smelling sandal-wood ! 

Then, still questioning, Gotama points out how — 
whereas when a marc is united with an ass, the 
offspring is a mule, different from both father and 
mother — the union of a Khattiya and a Brahman, or 
vice versa, results in offspring which resembles both 
the parents, with the obvious suggestion that there is 
not really any difference of species or caste between 
Khattiya or Brahman and half-caste or low-caste men, 
as there is in the case of a donkey and. a horse. 

Finally, Gotama asks the young Brahman scholar, 
"to which of two brothers, one an initiated student 
"and the other not, the Brahmans themselves would, 
" on sacred and solemn occasions, give the precedence?" 

"To the initiated student," says Assalayana ; "for 
"what thing given to an uninitiated person,, not a 
"student, will bear with it great advantage?" 

" But if the initiated student be of bad character 
"and evil habits, and the other be of good character 
" and virtuous habits," rejoins Gotama, "to whom then 
"will the Brahmans themselves give the precedence?" 

"To the uninitiated," is the reply; "for what thing 
"given to a man of bad character and of evil habits 
"will bring with it great advantage?" 

" But in the former answer you yourself, Assa- 
"layana," says the Master, "have given up the pre- 
" eminence of birth, and in the latter the pre-eminence 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



55 



" of acquaintance with the sacred words. And in doing 
"so you yourself have acknowledged that purity of 
"all the castes which I proclaim ! " 

"When he had thus spoken, the young Brahman 
"Assalayana," says the Sutta, "sat there silent, awk- 
"ward, distressed, looking downwards, reflecting, not 
" able to answer ! " 

Then Gotama tells a story, winding up with a kind 
word to the young scholar. And the Sutta concludes 
with the confession of Assalayana: " Most excellent, 
" Gotama, are the words of thy mouth — most excellent ! 
" May the venerable Gotama receive me as a disciple 
" and as a true believer, from this day forth as long as 
" life endures !" 



It will be seen that this Sutta is merely of a negative 
character, the interlocutor being defeated, as it were, 
out of his own mouth by a kind of argumentum ad 
hominem, in which' nothing is assumed but that 
which the opponent himself will grant. 

Let us therefore take another Sutta, in which the 
positive side of Gotama's teaching comes into view, 
though only the lower morality of the unconverted 
man, the Adi-brahma-cariyai), not the higher 
system of the jSToble Path, the Magga-brahma- 
cariyarj. As in the Sutta we have just summarized, 
nothing is assumed in the argumentative part of this 



5G 



THE TALI PITAKAS. 



one which the opposite side do not themselves acknow- 
ledge. As in the last example, time will not allow me 
to give more than an abstract, but a complete version 
can be found in the volume of translations already 
referred to. 1 I have there rendered the title, "On 
"Knowledge of the Vcdas;" the Pali name is, 

The Tevijja Sutta 

OF THE 

DlGIIA NlKAYA. 

A number of wealthy and distinguished Biahmans 
arc represented as staving at a pleasant spot called 
Manasakata, on the banks of the Eapti. There they 
had built themselves huts in a fenced enclosure, where 
they were in the habit of meeting together to repeat 
their mantras, the wonder-working sacred words of 
the Yedas. 

Two young Biahmans, Vasettha and Bharadvaja, 
after learning by heart and repeating all day, go down 
in the evening to the river-side to bathe, and then 
walk up and down on the sandy beach. 

"Isow a conversation sprang up between Vasettha 
"and Bharadvaja, when they were thus taking exer- 
"cise after their bath, and walking up and down in 
"thoughtful mood, as to which was the true path, and 
" which the false." 



1 Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, pp. 156—203. 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 57 

Each, of them adduces the authority of a Brahman 
teacher, learned in the Scriptures ; and when neither 
is able to convince the other, Yasettha says, " That 
" Samaria Gotama, Bharadvaja, of the Sakya clan, who 
" left the Sakya tribe to adopt the religious life, is now 
"staying at Manasakata, in the mango-grove on the 
" bank of the river to the south of Manasakata. Now 
"regarding that venerable Gotama, such is the high 
" reputation that has been noised abroad, that he is said 
•"to be 'a fully enlightened one, blessed and wortlry, 
"'abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy, with 
" 'knowledge of the worlds, a blessed Buddha.' Come 
"then, Bharadvaja, let us go to the place where the 
"Samana Gotama is ; and having done so, let us ask 
" the Samana Gotama touching this matter. What 
"the Samana Gotama shall declare unto us, that let us 
" bear in mind !" 

So they go to the Master and lay their difficulty 
before him, Yasettha being the spokesman. When 
Gotama hears that they both depend upon authority, 
he wants to know what is the dispute, the difference 
of opinion between them. 

" Just, Gotama, as near a village or a town there are 
"many and various paths, yet they all meet together 
"in the village; just in that way are all the various 
"paths taught by various Brahmans — the Addhariya 
"Brahmans, the Tittiriya Brahmans, the Chandoka 
"Brahmans, the Chandava Brahmans, the Brahma- 



53 



THE PALI PIT AX AS. 



"cariya Brahmans — arc all these saving paths? Are 
"they all paths which will lead him who acts according 
" to them into a state of union with Brahma ? 

"Do you say that they all lead aright, Vasettha?" 

" I say so, Gotama." 

" Do you really say that they all lead aright, Yasct- 
"tha?" 

"So I say, Gotama." 

"But then, Vasettha, is there a single one of the 
{< Brahmans versed in the three Yedas, or of their 
" pupils, or of their teachers, or of their forerunners up 
" to the seventh generation, who has ever seen Brahma 
" face to face ?" 

To each of these questions, Vasettha answers " No." 

""Well, then, Vasettha, those ancient Bishis of the 
" Brahmans, versed in the three Vcdas, the authors of 
" the verses, the utterers of the verses, whose ancient 
"form of words so chanted, uttered or composed, the 
u Brahmans of to?day chant over again or repeat, in- 
" toning or reciting exactly as has been intoned or 
" recited — did even they speak thus, saying, ' "We 
" 'know it, we have seen it, where Brahma, is, whence 
" 'Brahma is, whither Brahma is?'" 

"Kot so, Gotama." 

" Then you say, Vasettha, that not one of the Brah- 
"mans, even up to the seventh generation, has ever 
" seen Brahma face to face. And that even the Bishis 
" of old, the authors and utterers of those ancient words 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



59 



u which the Brahmans of to-day so carefully intone and 
: ' recite, precisely as they have heen handed clown — ■ 
" even they did not pretend to know, or to have seen, 
"where or whence or whither Brahma is. So that the 
" Brahmaiis, versed in the three Yedas, have forsooth 
"said this: 'What Ave know not, neither have seen, 
" ' to a state of union with that can Ave sIioav the way !' 
"Just, Yasettha, as, when a string of blind men are 
" clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost 
" see, nor can the middle one see, nor can the hincler- 
" most see — just even so, methinks, Yasettha, is the 
"talk of the Brahmans, versed though they be in the 
"three Yeclas, but blind talk. -The first sees not, 
" neither does his teacher see, nor does his pupil. The 
"talk, then, of these Brahmans, versed in their three 
"Yeclas, turns out to be ridiculous, mere words, a vain 
" and empty thing !" 

This result is here concisely stated, though in the 
words of the original it has not been reached without 
further questions. In a similar Avay, Yasettha acknoAV- 
leclges that the Brahmans cannot show the Avay to a 
state of union with the sun and the moon gods whom 
they can see: on Avhich follows an obvious rejoinder 
very much as above, concluding with: 

"Just, Yasettha, as if a man should say, 'How I 
" 'long for, Iioav I loA^e, the most beautiful Avoman in 
'"this land!' 

" And people should ask him, ' Well, good friend ! 



GO TIIE TALI PITAKA8.' 

" • this most beautiful "woman in the land, whom you 
'• "thus love and long for, do you know whether that 
"'beautiful woman is a noble lad)-, or a Brahman 
" •woman, or of the trader class, or a Sudda?' 

"And Avlicn so asked, he should answer, 'No !' 

"And when people should ask him, 'Well, good 
'"friend! this most beautiful woman in all the land, 
'■ ' whom you so love and long for, do you know what 
"'her name is, or her family name ; whether she be 
'• 'tall or short, dark or of medium complexion, black 
"'or fair; or in what village or town or city she 
"'dwells?' 

" But when so asked, he should answer, 'No !' 

"And then people should say to him, ' So then, good 
•• • friend ! whom you know not, neither have seen, her 
" ' do you love and long for ?' 

"And then, when so asked, he should answer, ' No !' 

"Now what think you, Vasettha? AVould it not 
"turn out, that being so, that the talk of that man 
"was foolish talk?" 

"In sooth, Gotama, it would," replies Vasettha, 
though he knows now what will be the rejoinder to 
follow. After another simile, or parable, very forcible 
in its way, which I must omit, Gotama continues : 

"Again, Vasettha, if this great river Eapti were 
"full of water, even to the brim, and overflowing, and 
'•a man with business for the other side, bound for 
" the other side, should come up and want to cross 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



61 



" over, and lie, standing on this bank, were to invoke 
"the further bank, and say, 'Come hither, further 
"'bank! come over to this side!' Now what think 
"you, Vasettha ? Would the further bank of the 
" Kapti, by means of that man's invoking, and praying, 
"and hoping, and praising, come over to this side?" 
" Certainly not, Gotama !" 

" In just the same way, Vasettha, do the Brahmans, 
"versed in the three Vedas — but omitting the prac- 
"tice of those qualities which really make a man a 
"Brahman, and adhering to those things which really 
"make men not Brahmans — say thus : ' Indra we call 
"'upon: Soma we call upon: Varuna we call upon: 
"' Isana we call upon : Pajapati we call upon : Brahma 
" ' we call upon : Mahiddhi we call upon : Yama we 
" ' call upon !' Verily, Vasettha, that these Brahmans 
" — so long as they omit the practice of virtue, and 
"follow after evil — that they, by reason of their 
"invoking, and praying, and hoping, and praising, 
" should, after death, and when the body is dissolved, 
"become united with Brahma— verily, such a condi- 
"tion of things has no existence !" 

Then, by other similes and other questions, each as 
elaborately worked out, Gotama shows how yielding to 
one's senses and one's lasts, how malice, sloth, pride, 
self-righteousness and doubt, must in fact be bonds and 
hindrances and entanglements, which, from Vasettha' s 
own point of view, will prevent any real union with 



02 ' THE PALI PITATv.VS. 

God. And he concludes his last point, and with it the 
negative side of his argument, thus : 

''Then you say, Vasettha, that the Brahmans are 
" in possession of wives and wealth, and that Brahma* 
"is not. Can there then be agreement and likeness 
"between the Brahmans, with their wives and pro- 
perty, and Brahma., who has none of these things?" 

"Certainly not, Gotama!" 

"And you say too, Vasettha, that the Brahmans 
"bear anger and malice in their hearts, and are sinful 
'•and uncontrolled, whilst Brahma, is free from anger 
"and malice, and is sinless, and has self- mastery. 
"Now can there then be concord and likeness between 
"the Brahmans and Brahma?" 

"Certainly not, Gotama!" 

"Very well then, Vasettha ! That these Brah- 
" mans, versed though they be in their three Vcdas, 
"and yet bearing anger and malice in their hearts, 
" sinful and uncontrolled, should, after death and 
" when the body is dissolved, become united to Brahma, 
" who is just the opposite of all this — such a condition 
" of things has no existence ! 

"So that thus, then, Vasettha, the Brahmans, while 
"they sit down in confidence in their knowledge of 
"the Vedas, arc really sinking. down in mire. And 
"so sinking, they are arriving only at despair, think - 
"ing the while that they arc crossing over into some 
"happier land! Therefore is it that the three-fold 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



63 



" wisdom of the Brahrnans, wise in the Yedas, is called 
"a waterless desert, their three-fold wisdom is called 
"a pathless jungle, their three-fold wisdom is called 
"destruction !" 

Yasettha, deeply moved, asks the Master whether 
he can show the way to union with Brahma, and, when 
he hears that he can, humbly beseeches him to do so, 
closing his appeal with the words, "Let the venerable 
Gotama save the Brahman race." 

Then the Master sets forth his scheme of elementary 
morality, which, as was called attention to above, is 
below and introductory to the higher morality of the 
Noble Path. With a great deal of it we cannot agree, 
but it is not the less historically interesting on that 
account. As he is addressing Yasettha and Bharad- 
vaja, he first lays stress upon the advantages of joining 
his Order ; but this was not considered in early Bud- 
dhism to be necessary, though it was held to be condu- 
cive, to the practice of either the lower morality here 
described, or the more advanced condition of those who 
have entered the Path. What we are now to hear is 
not a complete statement of the Buddha's own view of 
life — that would be a description of Arahatsliip — but 
the Buddha's answer to the particular question pro- 
pounded to him, namely, What is the right way to a 
state of union with Brahma ? Gotama begins : 

" Know, Yasettha, that from time to time a Tathagata 
"is born into the world, a fully Enlightened One, 



64 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



" blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom and gotid- 
"ncss, happy, with knowledge of the world, unsur- 
" passed as a guide to erring mortals, a teacher of 
"gods and men, a Blessed Buddha. He, by himself, 
''thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were, face to, 
"face this universe — the world below with all its" 
" spirits, and the worlds above, of Mara and of Brahma, 
" — and all creatures, Samanas and Brahmans, gods 
"and men, and he then makes his knoAvlcdgc known 
"to others. The truth .doth he proclaim both in its 
" letter and in its spirit, lovely in its origin, lovely in 
"its progress, lovely in its consummation: the higher 
"life doth he make known, in all its purity and in all 
"its perfectness. 

"A householder (gahapati), or one of his children, 
" or a man of inferior birth in any class, listens to that 
"truth. 1 On hearing the truth he has faith in the 
" Tathagata, and when he has acquired that faith he 
" thus considers with himself : 

" ' Full of hindrances is household life, a path defiled 
" ' by passion : free as the air is the life of him who 
" 'has renounced all worldly things. IIoav difficult is 
" ' it for the man who dwells at home to live the higher 
"'life in all its fulness, in all its purity, in all its 
« < bright perfection ! Let me then cut otf my hair and 



1 The point is, that the acceptance of this "Doctrine and Disci- 
pline" is open to all, not of coarse that Brahmans never accept it. 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



65 



w ' beard, let me clothe myself in the orange-coloured 
" 'robes, and let me go forth from a household life into 
" 1 the homeless state !' 

" Then before long, forsaking his portion of wealth, 
"be it great or be it small; forsaking his circle of 
iatives, be they many or be they few, he cuts off 
"his hair and beard, he clothes himself in the orange- 
" coloured robes, and he goes forth from the household 
"life into the homeless state. 

" When he has thus become a recluss. he passes a 
" life self-restrained according to the rules of the 
" Patimokkha ; uprightness is his d.^igki;, and he sees 
u danger in the least of those things he should avoid ; 
" he adopts and trains himself in the precepts ; he 
" encompasses himself with holiness in word and deed ; 
"he sustains his life by means that are quite pure; 
" good is his conduct, guarded the door of his senses ; 
" mindful and self-possessed, he is altogether happy ! :n 



1 The argument is resumed after the Three Silas, or Descriptions 
nduct — a text, doubtless older than the Suttas in which it 
i, setting forth the distinguishing moral characteiistics of a 
member of the Order. 

First Slla is an expansion of the Ten Precepts ("Pud- 
n," p. 160), but omitting the fifth, again-* the use ofintoxi- 
rig drinks. The Second Slla is a further- expansion of the 
and then of the last four, and finally of the fourth Precept. 
The Third Slla is directed against auguries, divinations, prophecies, 
logy, quackery, ritualism, and the worship yf gods (including 
Brahma). 

These Three Sdas may perhaps have been inserted in the Sutta 

F 



G6 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



"Now wherein, Yasettha, is his conduct good? 

" Herein, Yasettha, that putting away the murder 
" of that which lives, he abstains from destroying life. 
" The cudgel and the sword he lays aside ; and, full of 
'' modesty and pity, he is compassionate and kind to 
" all creatures that have life ! 

" This is the kind of goodness that he has. 

" Putting away the theft of that which, is not his, 
"he abstains from taking anything not given. He 
' ; takes only what is given, therewith is he content, and 
"he passes his life in honesty and in purity of heart ! 

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has. 

" Putting away unchastity, he lives a life of chastity 
"and purity, averse to the low habit of sexual inter- 
" course. 

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has. 

"Putting away lying, he abstains from speaking 
" falsehood. He speaks truth, from the truth he never 
"swerves; faithful and trustworthy, he injures not his 
"fellow-man by deceit. 

"This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has. 

"Putting away slander, he abstains from calumny. 
" What he hears here he repeats not elsewhere to raise 
"a quarrel against the people here: what he hears 



as a kind of counterpoise to the Three Vedas. Our Sutta really 
reads better without them ; but they are interesting in themselves, 
and the third is especially valuable as evidence of ancient customs 
and beliefs. 



THE PALI PITAEAS. 



67 



"elsewhere lie repeats not here to raise a quarrel 
"against the people there. Thus he lives as a binder 
"together of those who are divided, an encourager of 
" those who are friends, a peacemaker, a lover of peace, 
"impassioned for peace, a speaker of words that make 
"for peace. 

"This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has. 

" Putting away bitterness of speech, he abstains 
"from harsh language. Whatever word is humane, 
"pleasant to the ear, lovely, reaching to the heart, 
"urbane, pleasing to the people, beloved of the people 
" — such are the words he speaks. 

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has. 

"Putting away foolish talk, he abstains from vain 
"conversation. In season he speaks; he speaks that 
" which is ; he speaks fact ; he utters good doctrine ; he 
"utters good discipline; he speaks, and at the right 
" time, that which redounds to profit, is well-grounded, 
"is well-defined, and is full of wisdom. 

"This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has." 

Other paragraphs follow, first shorter and then 
longer, which concern only members of the Order, and 
not laymen. Then a series of still longer paragraphs, 
dissuading from the practice of all the various customs 
and ceremonies dependent upon the Animism then, and 
unfortunately long afterwards, current in India. We 
find in these lists all kinds of auguries, divinations, 
interpretations of omens, marks on the body, and 

f 2 



08 



THE PALI PITA K AS. 



dreams; offerings, sacrifices, spells, prophecies, astro- 
logy; casuistry, vows, rituals and ceremonies, only- 
mentioned to be condemned as worse than useless. 
And Gotama then addresses himself to the positive 
side of his argument, to the enumeration of the prac- 
tices that he puts in place of these Animistic follies. 

"And lie lets his mind pervade one quarter of the 
n world with thoughts of Love; and so the second, 
"and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the 
"whole wide world, above, below, around, and every - 
" where, does he continue to pervade with heart 
"of Love, far-reaching, grown great and beyond 
" measure ! ? ' 

This paragraph is then repeated, substituting for 
Love, in the first paragraph Pity, in the second Sym- 
r^iJhy, in the third Evenness of Mind. And to each 
of these there is a simile and a conclusion, thus : 

" Just, Vjxsettha, as a mighty trumpeter makes him- 
"self heard — and that without difficulty: — in all the 
"four directions, even so of all things that have shape 
" or life, there is not one that he passes by or leaves 
"aside, but regards them all with mind set free and 
" deep-felt love ! 

"Yerily, this, Vasettha, is the way to a state of 
" union with Brahma !" 

Finally, after comparing the condition of heart of 
the man who acts up to all these things with the 
character which Vasettha acknowledges that the Brah- 



THE PALI PITAKAS. 



69 



mans themselves ascribe to Brahma, the conclusion is 
readied : 

"Then in sooth, Yasettha, that such a man — who is 
"kind, and full of love, and pure in mind, and master 
"of himself— that he, after death and when the body 
"is dissolved, should become united with Brahma, 
"such a condition of things is every way possible !" 

After this, we cannot be surprised that the Sutta 
again, as in the former case, closes with the statement 
that "Yasettha and Bharadvaja addressed the Blessed 
" One, and said : 

"Most excellent, Lord, are the words of thy mouth, 
" most excellent ! Just as if a man were to set up 
" that which is thrown down, or were to reveal that 
"which is hidden away, or were to point out the right 
"road to him who has gone astray, or were to bring 
" a lamp into the darkness, so that those who have 
"eyes can see external forms; — just even so, Lord, 
"has the truth been made known to us, in many a 
"figure, by the Blessed One. And we, even we, 
"betake ourselves, Lord, to the Blessed One as our 
" refuge, to the Truth, and to the Brotherhood. 
"May the Blessed One accept us as disciples, as 
"true believers, from this day forth, as long as life 
" endures !." 

I will only add, to avoid a very natural misconcep- 
tion, that such a union with Brahma as is here referred 
to, is not supposed, in early Buddhism, to be the 



70 



THE PALI P1TAKAS. 



highest tiling which men should seek after. According 
to the theory of Karma, which will be explained in 
the next Lecture, it would only be a new being, Who 
has no conscious personal identity with the man wh'o 
has lived such a life, who would thus achieve a merely 
temporary union with a merely temporary Brahma. 
There can be no finality in such a union; it must end, 
like every other life, save that of the Arahat, in re- 
birth. And far better than that, an aim far worthier 
of the truly intelligent man, is to reach here on earth 
the Nirvana of a perfect life in Arahatship, which, it 
is true, includes all that we have heard of just now, 
but w hich also includes much more. 



I will now only detain you — and I must thank you 
for listening with so much attention to what has been 
a necessary, though I am afraid a somewhat tedious, 
sketch of the early Buddhist literature — while I make 
an announcement which I am sure you will hear with 
pleasure. As was said in the course of the Lecture, 
the Vinaya Pitaka, the Collection of the Rules of the 
Order, is already in the course of publication, and the 
more important parts of it are being translated into 
English. But the Suttas, which seem to me to be in 
many respects far more valuable and interesting, still 
lie buried and unpublished in Pali MSS., which few 



THE PALI PITA K AS. 



71 



people can read and fewer still can understand. There 
has for some time been a correspondence going on 
between the leading Pali scholars in Europe, and they 
have all received with a welcome, not short of enthu- 
siastic, a proposal to form a Society for the publication 
of the original texts of the whole of these curious and 
ancient books. The scholars referred to are willing to 
give their services gratuitously, and I trust before long 
we shall have both texts and translations into English 
of all the Suttas, and of the supplementary Abhi- 
dhamma books, available for the use of those who wish 
to find out wdiat early Buddhism really was. All that 
is wanted is, that a few of those who have the money 
should join with those who have the necessary know- 
ledge, by subscribing towards the cost of printing. 
I am empowered, therefore, by the Committee of the 
Pali Text Society, as the young Society will be called, 
to inform you to-clay of its birth. Two hundred 
subscribers of a guinea a-year will make it a success. 
The scholars who will do the work without pecuniary 
reward of any kind, have already promised to subscribe 
themselves, and a feAV donations of larger sums would 
make the matter comparatively easy. I need say 
nothing on the importance of such an undertaking, 
especially with reference to a right understanding of 
the origin and growth of religious belief. Your pre- 
sence here to-day sufficiently proves your sympathy 
with such an object. I will only conclude, therefore, 



72 



THE TALI TITAKAS. 



with an earnest appeal to those who can help in this 
matter, to give their cordial and practical co-operation 
to a cause so good, that all "who are fortunate enough 
to be fellow-workers in it will feel a just pride when 
it has been carried by their aid to a successful accom- 
plishment. 1 

1 I have thought it right, after some hesitation, to retain these 
last sentences as they originally stood. A few hundred pounds are 
still required to make up the necessary amount; and in a wealthy 
country like England, where thousands are constantly heing raised 
for objects not more deserving, I trust that the deficiency will, before 
long, be entirely supplied by those who sympathize with the pro- 
posed undertaking. A fuller statement of the present state of the 
Society will be found at tlie end of the volume, and any one who is 
willing to help can there see what is still required. 



LECTURE m. 



TIIE BUDDHIST THEOEY OF KAEMA. 



In the first Lecture we endeavoured to estimate the 
general position of Buddhism in the religious history, 
firstly of India, and secondly of the world at large. 
In the closing sentences stress was laid upon the fact 
that Buddhism was in a great degree the pouring of 
new wine into old bottles, and the disastrous effect of 
its method in this respect was touched upon. In no 
particular was this more the case than in its teaching 
about the belief, then an unquestioned and universal 
belief in India, of the transmigration of souls. 

This doctrine, as has been already pointed out, is 
entirely absent from the Yedas; and the question 
naturally arises, Where did it come from? Anthro- 
pologists seem to be of the opinion that it was world- 
wide in its distribution, and that it may be found 
everywhere in the lower stages of civilization. But 
they must admit that there is not the least evidence 



71 



TIIE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



to show that the Aryans, before their dispersion, had 
passed through, tliis stage of belief ; and I venture to 
doubt whether the doctrine of the transmigration of souls 
has ever been independently arrived at or generally 
hold among any one of the seven races into which the 
Aryans were subsequently distributed. This suggestion 
has, I am afiaid, the disadvantage of novelty ; but the 
importance of the fact, if it turn out to be true, will, I 
trust, justify the desire at least to raise a question the 
decision of which I must leave to abler hands. If the 
Aryan races cannot be shown to have entertained a 
belief otherw ise so widely spread, it shows how great 
should be the caution with which we can venture to 
argue from the beliefs of one race to those of another ; 
and it also offers a fresh confirmation of the fact that the 
course of early religious belief is by no means every- 
where quite the same. The general term Animism is, 
indeed, a convenient expression for a rudimentary phi- 
losophy, which seems to have been almost, if not quite, 
universal. But races who have not as yet advanced 
beyond it, who see spirits everywhere, and find in the 
action of spirits a natural explanation of every myste- 
rious event, are not likely to be capable of simulta- 
neously entertaining very many ideas, or of carrying 
out any general principle to its logical conclusions. Of 
the various delusions that result from this Animistic 
conception of things, each individual, each tribe, has 
held only a few ; the details themselves are necessarily, 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAEMA. 



75 



therefore, different ; some are more persistent than 
others, and none are universal. 

Mr. Tylor, in his "Primitive Culture," which always 
seems to me one of the most interesting books that 
our language contains, has carefully collected, evidence 
regarding various curious notions allied to the Indian 
belief in the transmigration of souls. 1 But among the 
many instances he has adduced, there is not one which 
shows the idea among any Aryan people uninfluenced 
from outside. Indeed, the only instances he gives 
which are Aryan at all, are the well-known cases of 
Pythagoras and Plato; and while neither of these 
writers held the Indian notion, either in its Hindu or 
in its Buddhist form, neither of them have preserved 
to us, in the views they did hold, a product of the 
native mind of the Greeks. Their views of the con- 
tinued existence after death of the human soul in the 
bodies of other men, or of beasts, are philosophical 
speculations of isolated thinkers acquainted with foreign 
modes of thought, not the universally accepted beliefs 
of ordinary people. They are most probably modifi- 
cations of Egyptian ideas (such as those referred to by 
Herodotus, ii. 123), which are themselves very different 
from the Indian belief. 



* Vol. ii. pp. 1—10. 



7G 



TIIE BUDDIIIST TIIE0RY OP KARMA. 



Mr. Tylor might have mentioned Empedocles, who 
is reported to have said that he had been "a boy, a 
"girl, a bush, a bird, a fish." 1 Or he might have 
quoted Csesar's report of a supposed tenet of the Druids 
that " souls do not die, but pass at death from one 
to another ; and that this was a great incentive to 
virtue, for the fear of death was disregarded." 2 And 
my father has pointed out to me a curious Irish legend, 
recorded in the so-called Book of Balimote, which cer- 
tainly savours strongly of transmigration. As this work 
is not easily accessible, I will quote the passage. The 
poet is excusing himself for beginning his history a 
thousand years before his hero was born. It seems that 
his hero was really alive all the while. 

" 1. Tuan, son of Cairill, as we are told, 
Was freed from sin by Jesus ; 
One hundred years complete he lived, 
He lived in blooming manhood. 

" 2. Three hundred years in the shape of a wild ox 
He lived on the open extensive plains ; 
Two hundred and five years ho lived 
In the shape of a wild boar. 



1 Diog. Laert. viii. 12. 

2 Dc Bello Gallico, vi. 14. Compare Diodor. Sic. v. 28. 



THE EUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



77 



£< 3. Three hundred years he was still in the flesh 
In the shape of an old bird; 
One hundred delightful years he lived 
In the shape of a salmon in the flood. 

"4. A fisherman caught him in his net, 
He brought it to the king's palace ; 
When the bright salmon was there seen, 
The queen immediately longed for it. 

" 5. It was forthwith dressed for her, 
"Which she alone ate entire ; 
The beauteous queen became pregnant, 
The issue of which was Tuan." 1 

But the Book of Balimote is assigned by Irish 
scholars to the latter part of the 14th century ; 2 and we 
may well be excused for a little scepticism as to the 
complete correctness of Ceesar's information respecting 
the Druids, when we find that it stands so altogether 
isolated, and that other details he gives about them arc 
confessedly inaccurate. 



1 Tuan seems to have been a convert of Colimikill (Columba), 
a sixth-century Irish saint. — Celtic Scotland, a History of 
Ancient Albion, by William F. Skene, 1880, Vol. iii. p. 98. 

2 My authority for this statement is a private letter from Professor 
Rhys, who refers to Eugene O'Curry, Manners and Customs of 
the Ancient Irish, Vol. iii. p. 60. 



78 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



Apart, however, from the Aryan races, the belief in 
tlic passage of the sonl after death, not to another 
world only, but also into other human bodies in this 
world, is not uncommon, and has evidently had an 
independent origin in different times and countries. 
The various tribes of North-American Indians believed 
that the soul animating the body of an infant was the 
soul of some deceased person ; enslaved negroes, accor- 
ding to Mr. Tylor, have been known to commit suicide, 
that they may revive in their native land; and the 
aborigines of Australia hold white men to be the manes 
or ghosts of their own dead. They are said to express 
this in the simple formula, " Black-fellow tumble down, 
"jump up White-fellow j" and a native hanged at 
Melbourne is represented to have given vent to the 
hopeful belief that he would "jump up White-fellow 
" and have lots of sixpences." I may add that the 
Jews, at different periods of their history, seem to 
have held a similar doctrine ; for though I do not hold 
with those commentators who have discovered a refer- 
ence to it in the i\ ew Testament, it is found distinctly 
in several parts of the Talmud. 1 



1 John i. 21, ix. 2. Hershon's Talmudic Miscellany, pp. 
40, 57, 325—328; Goldstiieker's Remains, Sec, i. 215. The 
alternative in John ix. 2, " Who did sin, this man or his parents, 
" that he should be born blind 1 ?'' is one that would naturally occur 
to a Jew, who held, in the first place, that the "sins" of the parents 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



79 



And souls are not supposed to come back only as 
men. Mr. Tylor shows how certain tribes in North, 
and Sonth America, and in various parts of Africa, 
"drawing no definite line of demarcation between the 
" souls of men and beasts, admit without difficulty the 
"transmission of human souls into the bodies of the 
"lower animals." We have seen above that similar 
ideas have been entertained, from time to time, by 
isolated thinkers in Egypt, Italy and Greece, and they 
may be found even in Christian countries. Origeu, 
who was a Universal Eestitutionist, speaks of a cognate 
theory ; and in later times Descartes and Leibnitz and 
Lessing have leant in the same direction. 1 And a 
learned author has drawn up a list of no less than 4977 
books which treat, either in whole or in part, of the 
origin and destiny of the soul, and among these as 
many as 188 are on the Souls of Beasts. 2 Of these, I 
will only mention here two — quite lately published — 
a work by the well-known naturalist, the Eev. T. Gr. 



were visited also upon the children; and, secondly, that sin was 
possible already in the womb, since the embryo, in its later stages, 
was possessed of consciousness. See the speculations of the Babbis 
referred to by Lightfoot in his comment on the verse. The Augus- 
tiiuan theory of "peccatum originale" might equally give rise to 
such a question as the disciples are here represented to have put. 

1 Sec Appendix. 

2 Prof. Ezra Abbott's valuable Bibliography of the subject, 
annexed to William E. Alger's Doctrine of a Future Life, 
New York, 1878. 



so 



the nrnmnsT tueotcy of kaiolv. 



"Wood, on Animals Here and Hereafter, and ?.!. 
Lonis Figuicr's Le Lcndcmain de la Mort. Both of 
these teach the immortality of animals, and the French 
writer advocates a complete theory of transmigration. 



~Now we unfortunately have not, and can never hope 
to have, any information as to the ancient beliefs of 
the tribes who had entered India from the north-west 
before the Aryans, and ■whom the Aryans conquered 
and absorbed into their own community. Modern evi- 
dence of the beliefs now held among the hill tribes of 
India cannot be depended upon as affording any safe 
ground for conjecture in this respect ; much less modern 
evidence as to the details of the Animism still current 
among their possibly distant relatives in other parts of 
the world, such as the Finns or Lapps. All that can be 
.said is, that the Aryans did not bring a belief in transmi- 
gration of any kind with them into India. If, centuries 
before, they had ever entertained such ideas, which is 
wholly problematical, they had completely outgrown 
them. That they could have developed such ideas quite 
independently after their arrival in India, after the very 
different fancies recorded in the Yedas had become an 
accepted faith among them, is of course possible, but it 
is unlikely. jSTo parallel instance could, at present at 
least, be adduced from religious history elsewhere ; and 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



81 



Lad they done so, we should expect to find more dis- 
tinct traces in the later pre-Buddhistic literature of the 
beginnings and gradual progress of the new theory. 
But the Brahmanas still teach that the souls of men 
enter upon one new life- — good or bad according to 
their conduct here — in the other worlds : and it is in 
rare passages of some of the earlier TJpanishads that 
Ave first find the transmigration theory suddenly appear- 
ing in nearly perfect completeness. 1 

Thus in the Chandogya TJpanishad, in a passage 
found also in the Brihad Aranyaka, we read : " Those 
"whose conduct has been good will quickly attain 
" some good birth, birth as a Brahmana, or a Tvshatriya, 
"ora Vaisya." 2 

And in the Kaushitaki Brahmana TJpanishad: "All 
" who depart from this world go to the moon. In the 
"bright fortnight the moon is gladdened by their 
" spirits, but in the dark fortnight it sends them forth 
"into new births. Verily the moon is the door of 
"heaven. Him who rejects it, it sends on beyond; 
"but whoso rejects it not, him it rains down upon this 
"world. And here is he born either as a worm, or a 
"grasshopper, or a fish, or a bird, or a lion, or a boar, 



1 The theory occurs also in later TJpanishads, sn'h as the 
' 1 Up. (Weber, Ind. Stud. ii. pp. 69, 70); but these are post- 
Buddhistic. 

2 Chandogya TJpanishad, V. 10. See Max Midler, Sacred 
Books of the East, Vol. i. p. 84. 

Gr 



82 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



"or a serpent, or a tiger, or a man, or some other 
" creature, according to his deeds and his knowledge." 1 
The belief in transmigration is here united with a 
notion that souls go first to the moon, a theory so 
curiously common that I have ventured to quote below 
si»me striking examples of it. 2 But we are concerned 
here only with the transmigration theory, and the pas- 
sages now given show that that theory was already 
completely accepted in India at the time when these 
Upanishads were composed, which may be fixed ap- 
proximately about GOO years before the Christian era. 
The absence of any trace of the theory before that time 
seems to me to point, as the most probable conclusion, 
to the hypothesis that the pre-Aryan occupants of the 
valley of the Ganges were believers in something of 
the kind, and that the Aryans first derived the prin- 
ciple of the idea from them ; but not until long after 
the Aryans had entered India, and until the conquerors 
and the conquered had been fused together into one 
people. 



At that time the schools of the philosophizing Brah- 
man s were already in full vigour ; and though it is not 
easy to trace any modifications of the doctrine in pre- 
Buddhistic literature, it is quite possible that the idea 

1 Kaushltaki Brahmana Upanishad, ed. Cowell, p. 14G. 

2 See Appendix. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE KARMA. 83 

as derived by the Aryans extended only to the return 
of men's souls to a new existence in the outward form 
of men, plants or animals; and that the Brakmans 
themselves, or one or other of the heterodox teachers 
before Buddha, added, the belief in the eternity of 
this transmigration, which has been so fundamental a 
part of the theory since the time of the rise of Bud- 
dhism. But Gotama himself may have added this part 
of the theory, for we have no clear evidence of it 
before lie lived. 

In this respect it would be well here to give some 
account of the general idea of transmigration as held 
in common throughout India by Hindus after the fall 
of Buddhism. Parts of this belief may well be due 
to the influence of Buddhism, but it may also contain 
traces of ideas current when Buddhism arose, and of 
which we have no evidence from books known to be 
older than the time of Gotama. This general belief 
is, shortly stated, as follows. 

There is within the body of every man a soul, 
which, at the death of the body, flies away from it 
like a bird out of a cage, and enters upon a new life 
(at once, without going to the moon), either in one of 
tin heavens, in one of the hells, or on this earth. The 
only exception is in the rare case of a man having in 
this life acquired a true knowledge of God. According 
to the pre-Buddhistic theory, the soul of such a man 
goes along the path of the gods to God, and being 

Or 2 



84 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



united with Him enters upon an immortal life in which 
his individuality is not extinguished. In the later 
theory, his soul is directly absorbed into the Great 
Soul, is lost in it, and has no longer any independent 
existence. 

The souls of all other men enter, after the death of 
the body, upon a new existence in one or other of the 
many different modes of being. If in heaven or in 
hell, the sonl itself becomes a god or a demon without 
entering a body; all superhuman beings, save the great 
gods, being looked upon as not eternal, but merely 
temporary creatures. If tli£ soul returns to earth, it 
may, or may not, enter a new body ; and this either of 
a human being, an animal, a plant, or even a material 
object. Tor all these are possessed of souls, and there 
is no essential difference between their souls and the 
souls of men — all being alike mere sparks of the Great 
Spirit, who is the only real existence. 

The outward condition of the soul is, in each new 
birth, determined by its actions in a previous birth; 
but by each action in succession, and not by the 
balance struck after the evil has been reckoned off 
against the good. A good man who lias once uttered 
a slander may spend a hundred thousand years as a god 
in consequence of his goodness, and, when the power of 
his good actions is. exhausted, may be born as a dumb 
man on account of his transgression ; and a robber, 
who has once done an act of mercy, may come to life 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE EAliMA. 



85 



in a king's body as the result of his virtue, and* then 
suffer torments for ages in hell or as a ghost without 
a body, or be re-born many times as a slave or an 
outcast, in consequence of his evil life. The relation 
between the act and its fruit, between the Karma and 
its Vipaka, was practically looked upon as being so 
uncertain, undetermined and even arbitrary, that it is 
impossible to trace in ordinary cases any law or propor- 
tion between the cause and the effect. But the effect 
was considered to follow the cause inevitably and 
naturally, without the intervention of any deity to 
apportion the reward or punishment. And in special 
cases there was a vague feeling of a certain relation 
between the conduct and its result. Offences against 
the Brahmans would unquestionably produce the most 
evil fruit with the greatest certainty and the greatest 
speed, and the performance of right sacrifices and libe- 
rality to the priests would in the shortest time bring 
about the happiest effect. All that was absolutely cer- 
tain was that each act of the soul, good or bad, must 
work out its full effect to the sweet or bitter end. 

There is no escape, according to this theory, from the 
result of any act; though it is only the consequences of 
its oavu acts that each soul has to endure. The force has 
been set in motion by itself, and can never stop ; and its 
effect can never be foretold. If evil, it can never be 
modified or prevented, for it depends on a cause already 
completed, that is now for ever beyond the soul's 



80 



TirF BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



control. There is even ho continuing consciousness, 
no memory of the past that could guide the soul to any 
knowledge of its fate. The only advantage open to it 
is to add in this life to the sum of its good actions, that 
they may bear fruit with the rest. And even this can 
i mly happen in some future life under essentially the 
same conditions as the present one; subject, like the 
present one, to eld age, decay and death ; and affording 
opportunity, like the present one, for the commission 
of errors, ignorances or sins, which in their turn must 
inevitably produce their due effect of sickness, disabi- 
lity or woe. Thus is the soul tossed about from life to 
life, from billow to billow in the great ocean of trans- 
migration. And there is no escape save for the very 
few who, during their birth as men, attain to a right 
knowledge of the Great Spirit ; and thus enter into 
immortality, or, as the later philosophers taught, are 
absorbed into the Divine Essence. 



As this theory is contradictory to ideas commonly 
held among us, it will be considered by many, without 
any further argument, to carry with it its own con- 
demnation as a mere farrago of baseless fancies. The 
founder of Buddhism found something very like it an 
accepted belief, and lie dealt with it as some Broad- 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 87 

churchmen deal with beliefs accepted now. He endea- 
voured to bring it into harmony with his new ideas by 
putting new meanings into the old phrases. And the 
extent of the modifications he introduced was deter- 
mined by the method which he followed throughout 
the formulation of his whole system when he had to 
deal with the inherited beliefs. Like many earnest 
religious teachers of the present day, he did not leave 
them alone, and endeavour to arrive at truth by an 
examination of the evidence at his command, pausing 
humbly where incertitude began. But he rejected only 
those parts of his earliest creed which were clearly 
inconsistent with what he held to be true. In such 
cases, the ultimate beliefs accepted are not necessarily 
more true than those that are rejected; they are only 
less easily proved false. 

Now the doctrine of a former existence, like the 
allied doctrine of a future life, cannot be disproved, 
for it deals with a sphere beyond the reach of human 
experience. And the doctrine that whatsoever a man 
reaps that he himself must also have sown, appealed as 
strongly to ethical natures as the very different, though 
allied, doctrine, that "whatsoever a man soweth that 
"shall he also reap," appeals to us now. These doc- 
trines were retained by Gotama; and he also taught 
tlic eternal persistence in ordinary cases of the force of 
Karma. But he changed the whole aspect and prac- 
tical effect of the doctrines he retained by disconnecting 



88 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



them from the soul-theory out of "which they had grown 
and on which they had hitherto depended. 



The various religious faiths professed in Europe are 
so inextricably interwoven with the belief in a soul, 
that it is very difficult in this respect rightly to appre- 
ciate the Buddhist point of view. We must never 
forget that the earliest Buddhism looks with a certain 
contempt and aversion on all these discussions about 
the future life. The Buddhist doctrine is: "Try to 
"get as near to wisdom and goodness as you can in 
"this life. Trouble not yourselves about the gods. 
"Disturb yourself not by curiosities or desires about 
" any future existence. Seek only after the fruit of 
" the noble path of self-culture and of self-control !" 

Thus in the Sabbasawa Sutta of the Majjhima ISTikaya 
we read : 

"It is by his consideration of those things which 
"ought not to be considered, and by his non-consider- 
" ation of those things which ought to be considered, 
"that wrong leanings of the mind, which had not 
" arisen before, arise within him ; and wrong leanings 
" of the mind, which had arisen before, grow great ! 

" Unwisely doth he consider thus : ' Have I existed 
" ' during the ages that are past, or have I not ? What 
" ' was I during the ages that are past ? How was I 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



89 



" ' during the ages that are past ? Having been what, 
" ' what did I become in the ages that are past ? Shall 
" 4 1 exist during the ages of the future, or shall I not ? 
"'"What shall I he during the ages of the future? 
"'How shall I he during the ages of the future? 
" 'Having been what, what shall I become during the 
" ' ao-es of the future ?' Or lie debates within himself 
"as to the present : ' Do I after all exist, or am I not ? 
" ' How am I ? This is a being ; whence now did it 
" ' come, and whither will it go ?' " 

"In him thus unwisely considering, there springs 
"up one or other of the six absurd notions" [all of 
which are about the soul and are then set out]. " This, 
" brethren, is called the walking in delusion, the jungle, 
"the wilderness, the puppet-show, the writhing, the 
"fetter of delusion!" .... 

"But the wise man, brethren, the disciple walking 
" in the noble path, who knows those who are walking 
"in the noble path, who comprehends, and is trained 
"according to the doctrine of the noble path . . . . 
"he understands both what things ought to be consi- 
" dered, and what things ought not to be considered. 
"And, thus understanding, the things that ought to 
"be considered, those he considers; and the things 
" that ought not to be considered, those he does not 
" consider." 1 



* Eh. D. Buddhist Sutlas from the Pali, pp. 29S— 300. 



no 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



This sounds very much like the opinions we have 
lately become accustomed to hear labelled as Agnos- 
ticism. But any one who has read the Pali Suttaa 
will understand how Gotama would have rejected the 
epithet with an indignation none the less real for its 
mildness and benignity. His was essentially a positive, 
not a negative system. His objections to metaphysical 
discussions, or even musings, about the past or future 
conditions of the "soul," may be compared to the dis- 
like of a practical politician, anxious to get on with 
arrears of work, to obstructive motions for the adjourn- 
ment of the House. That those objections should be 
pitched upon as the characteristic mark of his opinions, 
as the appropriate ground for the name of his teaching, 
would have seemed to him ridiculous. Kightly or 
Avrongly, he had an intense consciousness of insight ; 
and so far from accepting the title of Agnostic, would 
have called himself, in the fullest possible sense, a 
Gnostic. 

The unthinking multitude received, without a doubt, 
the soul-creed their fathers had held for hundreds, and 
probably for thousands, of years. The philosophers 
indulged in numberless speculations, which only agreed 
in regarding the subject as worth discussing. It is 
true he refused to follow their method, and refusal has 
a negative side. But in relation to them his position 
cannot rightly be called negative : it was the relation 



THE BUDDHIST THE0EY OP KARMA. 



91 



of the astronomer to the astrologer, of the chemist to 
the alchemist. 



The parallelism of relation last referred to holds good 
also in other respects. History shows us that there 
was no sudden jump from folly to science, though 
the abandoning of vain hopes was a turning-point, 
a necessary step, in the progress of knowledge. 
Chemistry was the child of alchemy, and bore at first 
a strange likeness to its mother. So also Gotaraa, 
though he had reached the shore, stood where his feet 
were washed by the waves of the sea. That part of 
the then prevalent transmigration theory which could 
not be proved false seemed to meet a deeply-felt neces- 
sity, seemed to supply a moral cause which would 
explain the unequal distribution here of happiness or 
woe, so utterly inconsistent with the present characters 
of men. He still therefore talked of men's previous 
existence, but by no means in the way that he is 
generally represented to have done. 

The transmigration of souls, very commonly sup- 
posed to be a fundamental part of Buddhism, has never 
been found mentioned at all, or even referred to, in 
the Pali Pitakas. I have no hesitation in maintaining, 
therefore, that Grotama did not teach the transmi- 
gration of souls. What he did teach would be 
better summarized, if we wish to retain the word trans- 



92 



THE BU1)DHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



migration, as the transmigration of character. But 
it would be more accurate to drop the word transmi- 
gration altogether when speaking of Buddhism, and 
to call its doctrine the doctrine of Karma. Gotama 
hold that after the death of any being, whether human 
or not, there survived nothing at all but that being's 
"Karma," the result, that is, of its mental and bodily 
actions. Every individual, whether human or divine, 
w as the last inheritor and the last result of the Karma 
of a long series of past individuals — a scries so long 
that its beginning is beyond the reach of calculation, 
and its end will be coincident with the destruction of 
the world. From this it would follow that each genera- 
tion was the exact, inevitable and natural result of the 
generation that had preceded it, that generation of the 
former one, and so on in succession during a practi- 
cally endless past. 



One of the latest speculations now being put forward 
among ourselves would seek to explain each man's 
character, and even his outward condition in life, by 
the character he inherited from his ancestors, a cha- 
racter gradually formed during a practically endless 
series of past existences, modified only by the condi- 
tions into which he was bom, those very conditions 
being also in like manner the last result of a practically 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE KARMA. 



93 



endless series of past causes. Gotama's speculation 
might be stated in the same words. But it attempted 
also to explain, in a way different from that which would 
he adopted by the exponents of the modern theory, that 
strange problem which it is also the motive of the won- 
derful drama of the Book of Job to explain — the fact that 
the actual distribution here of good fortune or misery is 
entirely independent of the moral qualities which men 
call good or bad. We cannot wonder that a teacher, 
whose whole system was so essentially an ethical re- 
formation, should have felt it incumbent upon him to 
seek an explanation of this apparent injustice. And 
all the more so, since the belief he had inherited, the 
theory of the transmigration of souls, had provided a 
solution perfectly sufficient to any one who coidd accept 
that belief. In the older theory, it was the same soul 
that had done evil which suffered the penalty (or rather 
had to bear the inevitable consequence) of its wrong- 
doing ; it was one and the same soul that did a good 
deed and that earned the reward (or rather that expe- 
rienced the natural result of its goodness). In order 
to serve the moral cause, Gotama retained the idea 
of personal identity. But he had discarded the theory 
of the presence, within each human body, of a soul 
which could have a separate and eternal existence. 1 
He therefore established a new identity between the 



See, on this point, below, Lecture VI. 



94 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



individuals in the chain of existence, which he, like 
his forerunners, acknowledged, by the new assertion 
that that which made two beings to be the same being 
w as — not soul, but — Karma. He taught, as the modern 
speculation docs, a real connection of cause and effect 
between persons in the present life and persons in a 
pasl life; but the connection was not a physical one 
between different individuals, it was a moral one 
between individuals who, according to the Buddhist 
belief, were the same. 

The Christian would deny that the two persons are 
the same, for there is no continuing consciousness, no 
passage of a soul, or of an I in any sense, from the one 
to the other. The Evolutionist would say that the con- 
centration in one new individual of the result of the 
Karma, the mental and bodily acts, of the one who has 
ceased to be, is no vera causa, but a pure hypothesis. 
But both will sympathize with the earnest seeking after 
a cause, and the overpowering sense of the necessity of 
justice, that gave rise to the formulation of the Bud- 
dhist belief. And the more thorough-going the Evolu- 
tionist, the more clear his vision of the long perspective 
of history, the greater will be his appreciation of the 
strangeness of the fact that a theory so far consistent 
with what he holds to be true should have been possible 
at all in so remote a past. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



95 



It is interesting to notice that the very point which 
is the weakness of the theory — the supposed concen- 
tration of the effect of the Karma in one new being- 
presented itself to the early Buddhists themselves as a 
difficulty. They avoided it partly by explaining that 
it was a particular thirst in the creature dying (a 
craving, Tanha, which plays otherwise a great part 
in the Buddhist theory), which actually caused the 
birth of the new individual who was to inherit the 
Karma of the former one. But how this took place, 
how the craving desire produced this effect, was ac- 
knowledged to be a mystery patent only to a Buddha. 
I will not therefore dwell upon this further, except to 
point out the very curious coincidence that Plato, 
in adopting the Pythagorean transmigration into his 
system, added to it a very similar theory. 
He makes Socrates say in the Phoedo : 1 
" The truth rather is, that the soul which is pure at 
" departing and draws after her no bodily taint, having 
"never voluntarily had connection with the body, 
"which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into 
" herself (for such abstraction has been the study of 
"her life : and what does this mean but that she has 
en a true disciple of philosophy ....); that soul, 
" I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world, 

1 Dueilo, 69: Jowett's Translation, i. 457, ed. 1875. For tho 
context, ace Appendix. 



96 



the ]:rnnmsT theory op karma. 



"to the divine anil immortal and rational .... and is 
"released from the error and folly of men, their fears 

"and wild passions and all other human ills But 

"the smd which has been polluted, and is impure at 
kl the time of her departure, and is the companion and 
"servant of the body always, and is in love with and 
" fascinated by the body and by the desires and plea- 
" snres of the body, .... do you suppose that such a 
"soul will depart pure and unalloyed? 1 .... She is 
"held fast by the corporeal, which the continual asso- 
ciation and constant care of the body have wrought 
" into her nature, .... is depressed and dragged down 
"agajii into the visible world. These 'must be the 
" souls .... who are compelled .... to wander .... 
"in payment of the penalty of their former evil . . . . 
"until, through the craving after the corporeal 
" which never leaves them, they are imprisoned finally 
"in another body. And they may be supposed to find 
" their prisons in the same natures which they have had 
"in their former lives. 2 .... I mean to say that men 
"who have followed after gluttony, and wantonness, 
" and drunkenness, and have had no thought of avoid- 
ing them, would pass into asses and animals of that 

" sort And those who have chosen the portion of 

"injustice, and tyranny, and violence, will pass into 
"Avolves, or into hawks and kites And there is 



1 P. 458. 



2 P. 459. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 97 

"no difficulty in assigning to all of them places accor- 
ding to their several natures and propensities. 
"Even among them, some are happier than others; 
"and the happiest, both in themselves and their place 
" of abode, are those who have practised the civil and 
" social virtues which are called temperance and justice, 
"and are acquired by habit and attention, without 

"philosophy and mind Because they may be 

" expected to pass into some gentle social nature which 
" is like their own, such as that of bees or wasps or ants, 
" or even back again into the form of man, and just and 
" moderate men to spring from them. .... But he who 
"is a philosopher or lover of learning, and is entirely 
"pure at departing, is alone permitted to attain to the 
"divine nature." 

Plato, it is true, lays down in this passage a theory 
which, in a very fundamental part of it, the assertion 
of the existence of souls within men's bodies, is dia- 
metrically opposed to the Buddhist theory ; and even 
with regard to the action of desire, he does not go as 
far as the great Indian teacher. Gotama held that it 
was equally desire which brought about, not only a 
new existence as an animal, but also as a man or a god. 
But when we find that the two greatest ethical thinkers 
of antiquity have independently arrived at conclusions 
so very similar, have agreed in ascribing to desires 
entertained in this life so great, and to us so inconceiv- 
able, a power over the future life, we may Avell hesitate 

H 



98 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



before we condemn the idea as intrinsically absurd. I 
\TOJlld .submit that we must go further, and acknowledge; 
in this curious coincidence another very striking in- 
stance of the most important fact which the compara- 
tive study of Buddhism has to show, — I mean the fact, 
that, given similar conditions, similar stages in the 
( nurse of religious inquiry, men's thoughts, even in 
spite of the most unquestioned individual originality, 
and though they have never produced quite the same 
results, have constantly tended in similar directions. 



This curious parallel — which, whatever the con- 
clusion to be drawn from it, will, I trust, be thought 
worthy to have been pointed out — may throw some 
light upon the Buddhist theory. Life, according to 
that theory, is a chain of existences, never ending, 
and the sequences of which can never be foretold. It 
follows, firstly, that it will be good to escape from the 
chain, to attain to a condition that will be outside of 
the circle of change, outside the reach of the causes of 
change, and that will contain within itself the element 
of finality. 

The only such condition is, according to Buddhism, 
that state of mind, to be reached in this life, in which 
the craving desire just spoken of shall have ceased. 
2so new link will then be formed in the chain of exist- 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAR3IA. 



99 



ence ; the Karma of that particular chain of lives will 
cease to influence any longer any distinct individual ; 
and there will be no more birth ; for birth, decay and 
death, grief, lamentation and despair, will have come, 
so far as regards that chain of lives', for ever to an end. 

Now that state of mind is nothing else than Ara- 
hatship. So that our discussion, as every right dis- 
cussion of any part of Buddhism ought to do, has 
brought us to that central point of the Buddha's 
teaching, the goal, the hope, the aim of every good 
and enlightened Buddhist, the "Excellent Way" of 
self-culture and of self-control. 

As is said in the account of the closing days of 
Gotama's life, " the Blessed One addressed the disciples 
of Bhandagama, and said, 1 

" It is through not understanding and grasping four 
" conditions (four things), Brethren, that we have 
" had to run so long, to wander so long, in this weary 
"path of individuality, both you and I. 

" And what are these four ? 

" The noble conduct of life, the noble earnestness in 
" meditation, the noble kind of wisdom, and the noble 
" salvation of freedom. But when the noble kind of 
" conduct of life, of earnestness in meditation, of wisdom, 
"and of salvation by freedom, are seen face to face, 
" and are comprehended, then is the craving for exist- 

1 Book of the Great Decease (iv. 2, 3) : Eh. D., Buddhist 
Suttas from the Pali, pp. 64, 65. 

H 2 



III!) 



TIIE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



" cnce rontocl out, that which leads to renewed exist- 
ence is destroyed, and there is no more birth. 

" Righteousness, earnest thought, wisdom and free- 
dom sublime, 
"These are the truths realized by Gotama fur 
renowned. 

"Knowing them, he, the Knowcr, proclaimed the 
truth to the brethren. 

"The Master, with eye divine, the Quencher of 
griefs, is free !" 

Hie four Dhammas or conditions called in this pas- 
sage noble, are only one of many descriptions of what 
constitutes Arahatship, the end of the so-called Noble 
Path. But we cannot enlarge here upon Arahatship, 
or the Xoblc Path. I can only say now that it has 
many sides and many names, and that it is in reference 
to this extinction of that foolish and ignorant three-fold 
craving — the lust of the flesh, the lust of life, and the 
pride of life— and of the three most immediate results 
of that craving — viz. the inward fires of lust, hatred 
and delusion — that Arahatship is called Nibbana or 
Nirvana, a word which means " the going out, the 
becoming extinct," and has often, therefore, by writers 
ignorant of the first principles of Buddhism, been sup- 
posed to mean the extinction of the soul ! It is the 
"going out" of craving (Tanha) and of the three fires 
just referred to. 



THE BUDDHIST THEOEY OF KAliMA. 



101 



It follows that a good Buddhist must love righteous- 
ness for its own sake, and not for any supposed bene- 
fit that will accrue to him himself in a future life on 
account of his righteousness. For Buddhism does not 
teach any conscious identity between any two links 
in the chain of life, and it holds that the perfection 
of goodness and wisdom will actually put an end at 
once and irrevocably to any continuation at all of the 
good man's life in any sense. 

As the Buddhist writers are fond of saying, the rela- 
tion of the one life to the next is merely like that borne 
by the flame of a lamp to the flame of another lamp 
lighted by it. When the Arahat, the man made per- 
fect according to the Buddhist faith, ceases to live, no 
new lamp, no new sentient being, will be lighted by 
the flame of any weak or ignorant longing entertained 
by him. Alice in Wonderland puts the point exactly 
when she asks the question, full of the delicious nai veto* 
and confusion of a child's metaphysic, "I Wonder — ■ 
what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle's 
gone out?" It looks, according to early Buddhism, 
exactly like what little Alice and you and I will look 
like when our heart has ceased to beat, when the tem- 
porary collocation and combination of those Sarjkharas, 
those Confections, whose union makes our temporary 
individuality, shall have been dissolved; when our life 
has closed for ever, and our opportunities of personal 



102 



the isrnnmsT theory of karma. 



culture and happiness, our opportunities of kindness 
and of love, our opportunities of public service, our 
opportunities of service to the generations yet unborn, 
shall have passed away, never to revive in any different 
world ! 

This is in instructive contrast to the teachings of 
the theologies which hold out the hope, or state as a 
matter of fact, that a life of goodness or of right faith 
here on earth will render possible the inheritance of an 
immortality of heavenly bliss; and which then, logic- 
ally enough, insist, in the way of consolation and 
support, upon the utter shortness of the struggle as 
compared with the unspeakable infinity of the bliss 
beyond. In Buddhism, however exalted the virtue, 
however clear the insight, however humble the faith, 
there is no Arahatship if the mind be still darkened 
by any hankering after any kind of future life. 



This is clear from the passage just read from the 
Book of the Great Decease, and also from the descrip- 
tion, quoted above in the first Lecture, of the virtue of 
the Arab at as Aparamattho, "untarnished;" that is, 
untarnished by faith in the efficacy of ritual or by 
desire for future life. 1 "VVe cannot be surprised to find, 



1 Book of the Great Decease, i. 11, ii. 9, and frequently elsewhere. 
See above, p. 29, where the context is quoted. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF EAEMA. 1U3 

therefore, that this desire for a future life constitutes, 
two, out of a total of ten, Sanyojanas, or "fetters," 
of the mind, to have broken loose from which consti- 
tutes the " noble salvation of freedom" reached, in this 
life, in Arahatship. So the Cetokhila Sutta calls the 
entertainment of this desire after future life " spiritual 
"bondage," and adds, 

"Whatsoever brother, Bhikkhus, may have left 
"the world to enter the Order in the aspiration of be- 
" longing to some one or other of the angel hosts, think- 
1 1 ing to himself, ' By this morality, by this observance, 
" £ by this austerity, or by this earnestness of life, 
" ' may I become an angel, or one of the angels !' his 
" mind incline th not to zeal, exertion, perseverance and 
" struggle. But whosever mind inclineth not to zeal, 
" exertion, perseverance and struggle, he has not broken 

"through this Fifth Spiritual Bondage And 

"whatsoever brother, Bhikkhus, has not become 
" quite free from the five kinds of spiritual barrenness, 
"has not altogether broken through the five kinds of 
"mental bondage — that such an one should reach up 
"to flic Jul! advantage of, should attain to full growth 
"in this doctrine and discipline — that can in no wise 
"be!" 1 

So that not only is the Arahat to look for no reward, 
no happiness, which he himself is to be conscious of 

1 Eh. D., Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, pp. 227, 228, 
where the context may be seen. 



104 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



hereafter, but the nourishing of any hope of a future 
life is really even worse than unfounded ; it is declared 
to be an actual impediment in the "way of the only 
object that Ave ought to seek after, viz. the attainment 
in this world of the state of mental and. ethical culture 
summed up in the word Arahatship. 



It is easy to understand that this adaptation and 
modification of the previously existing doctrine of the 
transmigration of souls had little chance of being rc- 
o lived with enthusiasm, or even approval, among a 
populace accustomed to Animistic ideas much more 
congenial to the natural man. They preferred to look 
for a better world beyond, which the ritualisms would 
ensure to them, and to which the theologies could guide 
them. Xow early Buddhism had its answer also to 
them, and it was this : Very good ; you want to go to 
heaven. It is really a mistake. Arahatship is better 
than heaven, and the Arahats are above all gods. But 
still, if you cannot comprehend, that, then at least under- 
stand that the only way to heaven is — not ritual, but 
— righteousness. 

There is very clear distinction drawn by some Chris- 
tian teachers between the goodness of a converted 
Christian and the mere natural goodness of a moral 
man. A similar distinction runs all through the early 



THE BUDDHIST THEOEY OF EAItlLl. 



105 



Buddhist teachings between the intelligent goodness 
of those who have entered the Excellent Way, and the 
lower kind of goodness attainable by ordinary men. It 
is this lower kind of goodness which leads to re-birth in 
blissful states. And though the new being, according to 
the doctrine of the creative force of Craving Desire and 
of the transfer of Karma, will not be consciously 
the same as the man who dies, it will be, according to 
Buddhism, really the same, for it will inherit the same 
Karma. 

To the unconverted good man, then, the hope of a 
temporary life in heaven is as really held out in Bud- 
dhism as the hope of an eternal life in heaven is held 
out to the converted good man in Christianity. And 
in the same way the fear of purgatory, of a temporary 
fall into hell, is used as an argument in Buddhism to 
deter ordinary men from evil, just as the fear of pur- 
gatory is made use of among the Catholics, and the 
fear of hell aniong both Catholics and evangelical 
Protestants. 



It is very curious to notice that re-birth as an animal, 
which is of course possible according to the Buddhist 
theory, is scarcely ever referred to in this connection. 
We constantly find re-birth in general referred to as 
an evil, heaven and purgatory spoken of as the places to 
which the good and the evil respectively go, or life in 



106 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KA I! MA. 



the next world, the other world, represented as follow- 
ing, for all persons not Arahats, after life in this. 

So in the Book of the Great Decease, Gotama is 
represented, when giving milk to babes, to have said 
that "the wrong-doer .... on the dissolution of the 
" body, after death, is re-born into some unhappy state 
"of suffering and woe." While "the well-doer, on 
"the dissolution of the body, after death, is re-born 
"into some happy state in heaven." 1 Other similar 
passages are as follows : 

"There also do his good works receive him who has 
" done good, and has gone from this world to the 
"other — as kinsmen receive a favourite on his return. 2 

"When a man becomes fat and a great eater, a 
"sluggard, rolling this way and that as he lies, like a 
"great hog fed on offerings to the gods — again and 
"again does that fool enter the womb." 3 

"Him indeed I call a Brahmana who knows his 
" former abodes, who sees through heaven and hell, 
"who has reached the end of births." 4 

" He having mounted the Devayana (the vehicle of 
"the gods, exactly as in the Upanisliads) and entered 



1 Eh. D., Buddhist Suttas, &c, pp. 16, 17. 

2 Dhammapadar), verse 220. 

3 Ibid, verse 325. 

4 Sutta Nipata, verse 647, repeated in Dhammapadarj, verse 
423. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



107 



"the high road that is free from dust, having aban- 
" doned sensual desires, went to the Brahma world." 1 

" Those beings who are possessed of form, and those 
" who dwell in the formless worlds (that is, the highest 
"heavens), have to go to re-birth, for they know not 
" Arahatship. 

" But those who, having seen through all forms, who 
"are made free in Arahatship, such beings leave death 
"behind." 2 

The one connection in which re-birth as an animal 
is incidentally referred to, is when speaking of a Sota- 
panno, an Ariya-savako, who has entered the Noble 
Path, but has stopped short in his journey along it. 
He is represented to be "free from re-birth" in five 
kinds of various unhappy states (the panca-gatiyo), 
of which that of being an animal is mentioned as one. 3 

I trust I shall not be misunderstood. It is a ques- 
tion of degree. Re-birth as an animal, that is to say, 
the transfer of a man's Karma to an animal, either 
immediately or after some intervening stage, is clearly 
part of the oldest Buddhist belief. And the ; authors 
of later works rightly take it for granted. In the 
Cariya. Pitaka, which is even included in the supple- 
mentary part of the Pali Pitakas, the Karma of the 



1 Sutta Nipata, verse 138. 

2 Ibid. 754, 755. 

8 See Appendix for the authorities for this statement. 



10S 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



future Buddlnx is represented to have belonged, and 
apparently in succession, Loth to men and to animals. 
And certainly the Jataka stories, though only in one 
or two isolated instances, speak of the Karma of 
a human being- being immediately transferred to an 
animal. 1 But not a single instance has been found 
in the older parts .of the Pali Pitakas of a man being 
re-born as an animal, and, with the single exception 
just referred to, the doctrine is not even alluded to. 

It is strange that this has never been yet pointed 
out, for it seems to me to be of considerable importance 
for a right understanding of the early Buddhist belief. 
It has been so commonly supposed that the transmi- 
gration of the souls of men into animals was one of the 
principal, perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic 
of Buddhism, that I am afraid I must seem somewhat 
of an iconoclast in maintaining, not merely that there 
is no transmigration of souls in Gotama's teaching, that 
his real theory is a transfer of Karma, but even that 
comparatively little stress was originally laid upon the 
possibility of this transfer of Karma taking place imme- 
diately from a man to an animal. 

Yet you will recollect that the Upanishads say the 
souls of all dead men go to the moon, and thence only 
descend on to earth or into animals. In harmony with 



1 See, for instance, Kh. D., Buddhist Birth Stories, Vol. i. 
p. 253. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 109 

this, the earliest Buddhist doctrine may very well have 
been that the Karma of unconverted men would ordi- 
narily be carried, on by new beings in one of the various 
heavens or purgatories, and that only after this inter- 
mediate state of existence had come to an end would, 
their Karma be again carried on by other beings, in- 
cluding animals. It is at all events certain that any 
such birth in purgatory, or as an animal, was rendered 
impossible by the very entrance upon the Path, by the 
getting rid of the "fetter" of the delusions regarding 
the persistence of individuality ; while the attainment 
of Arahatship in this life at once prevented the Karma 
from beiug carried on by any individual of any kind 
whatever. 



In no case is there, therefore, any future life in the 
Christian sense. At a man's death, nothing survives 
but the effect of his actions ; and the good that he has 
done, though it lives after him, will redound, not to 
his own benefit, as we should call it, but to the benefit 
of generations yet unborn, between himself and whom 
there will be no consciousness of identity in any shape 
or way. 

As has been well pointed out by the Eev. Dr. Dods 
in his interesting work entitled, Mohammed, Buddha 
and Christ, "This is the Buddhist analogue to the 



110 



TIIE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



" Positivist offset to personal annihilation so winningly 

"presented by George Eliot: 

" ' may 1 join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence: live 

In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

And with their mild persistence urge men's search 

To vaster issues .... 

This is life to come !"' 

There is doubtless some analogy between this beau- 
tiful sentiment and the Buddhist doctrine, lint the 
modern poet has her mind directed upon the future, 
and the ancient prophet is thinking more especially of 
the past. Early Buddhism had no idea, just as early 
Christianity had not, of the principle underlying the 
foundation of the higher morality of thaiuturej the 
duty which we owe, not only to our fellow- men of 
to-day, but also to those of the morrow— to the race a3 
a whole, but in the future even more than now. Bud- 
dhists and Christians may both maintain, and rightly 
maintain, that the duty of universal love laid down in 
their Scriptures can be held to involve and include this 
modern conception; but neither the early Buddhists 
nor the early Christians looked at the matter quite in 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



Ill 



this way. The sense of duty to the race has sprung 
out of a fact, only lately become a generally received 
conception— I mean the progressive continuity of 
human progress. And the corresponding doctrine of 
Buddhism is not that "the thoughts of men arc 
"widened with the process of the suns," but that there 
are recurring cycles of improvement and decay. 

It is true that the Buddhist duty of universal love 
is much more far-reaching as regards the present than 
the corresponding duty as commonly received in any 
other religion. It enfolds in its ample embrace not 
only the brethren and sisters of the new faith, , not 
only our neighbours, but every being that has life. 
"As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, 
"protects her son, her only son, so let a man cultivate 
"goodwill without measure toward all beings. 
"Let him cultivate goodwill without measure — unhin- 
" clered love and friendliness— toAvard the whole world, 
" above, below, around. Standing, walking, sitting or 
"lying, let him be firm in this mind so long as he is 
"awake: this state of heart, they say, is the best in 
"the world I" 1 

But, so far as I know, it never occurred to the Bud- 



1 Brahman vihararj idha, literally "the highest condition." 
It is more fully descrihed in the passage quoted at the close of the 
last Lecture from the Tevijja Sutta. The verses here quoted are 
fro o [lie Metta Sutta, which forms part both of the Khud'daka 
Path a, and of the Sutta Nipata. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAKMAj 



dhist teachers to inculcate a duty towards the being? 
that will exist in the ages yet to come. Even such 
passages as that from the Sutra of the Forty-two Sec- 
tions, " To give food to such by the thousand myriad is 
"not like giving food to one Buddha, and learning to 
" pray to him from a desire to save all living creatures," 
have not heen found as yet in the older books. The 
expression "pray to him" is certainly impossible Bud- 
dhism even at the date of the Sutra of the Forty-two 
Articles, and evidently rests on a mistranslation. 1 

It is interesting to notice, however, how the glamour 
of the old Animism still survives both in the Buddhist 
doctrine and in George Eliot's poetry. Both hold that 
there is not really any "life to come" at all, in the 
ordinary Animistic sense; that all that survives is 
Karma. But both put the new wino into the old 
bottles. Both wrap up the bitter pill of absolute per- 
sonal dissolution in the sweetmeat of the old familiar 
phrases, for the better presentation of their new truth 
to egoistic minds, still hampered by what Gotama's 
disciples called the Sakkaya-ditthi, Bhavasava, 
the taint, the delusion, of the hankering after a con- 
# tinuing individuality. 

1 It occurs in Mr. Eeal's "Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the 
Chinese." M. Foucaux, in his " Sutra en 42 Articles" (Paris, 1878, 
p. 15), gives an entirely different, and no doubt more accurate ver- 
sion, direct from the original Sanskrit. He translates the last 
clause, " Cela est aiusi a cause du desir de rechercher, d'apprendre 
"a fond la voie du Bouddha, et de procurer le bien de tous les etres." 



THE BUDDHIST THEOEY OE KARMA. 



113 



And both, I think, were a little, just a little, caught 
in their own net. Did not the gifted poet see a some- 
thing more than poetic play of words in her "life to 
"come" ? And certainly, however often "the Master 
"with eye divine" reiterated, when speaking of the 
Arahat, the praises of individual cessation, both he and 
Plato attached to desire, as a real and sober fact, an 
influence and a power which has no actual existence. 



There is one other comparison which will help us to 
understand, not only the Buddhist theory of pre-exist- 
ence, but beliefs more familiar to us which have played 
a very great part in human affairs. I mean, first] y, 
that sense of an overruling and arbitrary Fate so power- 
fully represented in the Greek tragedies, and still so 
powerful among many peoples (more especially among 
Muhammadans) ; and secondly, that doctrine of pre- 
destination, of the foreknowledge of God, which has 
occupied so large a space in the thoughts of many 
Christian men. Each of these theories endeavours to 
give a philosophical explanation of an undeniable fact, 
the presence within us and about us of an irresistible 
power, which cannot be traced, and from which there 
is no escape. 

The Muhammadan doctrine of fate is not mere 
confession of ignorance, mere giving up in despair. It 

i 



114 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



includes a humble submission, a patient resignation, 
"which is often the best medicine for the supposed 
malady. Predestination is the logical expression, from 
the Monotheistic point of view, of the weight of the 
universe arrayed against the individual. Pre-existence, 
that part of the transmigration of Karma which is 
predominantly insisted upon in early Buddhism, is an 
ethical meeting of the same difficulty. 

The fact underlying all these theories is acknow- 
ledged to be a very real one. The history of the indi- 
vidual docs not begin with his birth. He has been 
endless generations in the making. And he cannot 
sever himself from his surroundings ; no, not for an 
hour. The tiny snowdrop droops its fairy head just so 
much, and no more, because it is balanced by the uni- 
verse. It is a snowdrop, not an oak, and just that 
kind of snowdrop, because it is the outcome of the 
Karma of an endless series of past existences; and 
because it did not begin to be when the flower opened, 
or when the mother-plant first peeped above the ground, 
or first met the embraces of the sun, or when the bulb 
began to shoot beneath the soil, or at any time which 
you or I can fix. A great American writer says : "It 
"was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of Fate, to 
"reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, when 
"the Hindoos said, Tate is nothing but the deeds 
" 1 committed in a prior state of existence.' I find the 
" coincidence of Eastern and Western speculation in 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE KAIUIA. 



115 



"the daring statement of tlie German philosopher 
" Schelling, 1 There is in every man a certain feeling 
"'that he has been what he is from all eternity.'" 
We may put a new and deeper meaning into the words 
of the poet : 

.... u Our deeds follow us from afar, 
And what we have been makes us what we are." 



As in the older teaching, so in modern Buddhism, 
it is this pre-existence aspect of the theory which plays 
the greatest part and has the greatest vitality. The 
modern Buddhist rarely imagines, or is afraid, that 
there is any chance of his being re-born as an animal. 
He may think of such an event with regard to his 
neighbour, or as a joke, but not in a serions, religious 
mood as a possible occurrence to himself. The doctrine 
of Karma was never intended to be so much an expla- 
nation of what would happen to men after death, as an 
explanation, drawn from the past, of what was iioav 
happening to him during life. And so also the belief 
in previous existence still presents itself to the Bud- 
dhist as a theory which accounts for the present by the 
past, and as the foundation of the humorous ethies, the 
sly fun, of the Buddhist Birth Stories. 

These are still and always have been a very present 
reality, a great power, to the vast numbers of the 

i 2 



116 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



Buddhists in every land. I recollect, some years ago, 
when I was in Ceylon, riding one night along the 
beautiful road from Galle to Colombo, one of the most 
lovely roads in the world, shaded throughout with the 
exquisite roof of the palm-leaves, and bordered on one 
side with long stretches of green sward clearly visible 
between the branchless stems of the trees, while on the 
other side the blue sea beats upon the shore, and bears 
with it a fresh and strengthening breeze. The moon 
was blight — more full than usual, I suppose, with the 
radiance of the departed souls of the good; — and at a 
turn of the road I came suddenly in view of an open 
space, visible througl\thc trees on my left, where hun- 
dreds of people, dressed in their best and brightest, 
were seated on the ground, listening to what appeared 
to be a sermon. I rode up, and was surprised to find 
them talking and smiling pleasantly to one another. 
Tired with my journey, I stopped and listened. What 
they were drinking in with .such evident delight were 
Jataka tales, the Buddhist Birth Stories. This day, 
too, we have had a long journey, and we are perhaps 
somewhat like Milton's angels who 

" reasoned high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end in wandering mazes lost." 

Will you let us rest ourselves for awhile, while you 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KA.RMA. 117 

listen to a Jataka story wliich is very much to the 
point ? 

" Long ago the Bodisat was bom to a forest life as 
" Genius of a tree standing near a certain lotus pond. 

" Now at that time the water used to run short at 
"the dry season in a certain pond, not over large, in 
"which there were a good many fish. And a crane 
"thought, on seeing the fish — 

" ' I must outwit these fish somehow or other and 
" ' make a prey of them.' 

" And he went and sat down at the edge of the 
"water, thinking how he should do it. 

" When the fish saw him, they asked him, ' What 
" ' are you sitting there for, lost in thought?' 

" ' I am sitting thinking about you,' said he. 

" 'Oh, sir! what are you thinking about us?' said 
" they. 

"'Why,' he replied, 'there is very little water in 
"'this pond, and but little for you to eat; and the 
" 'heat is so great ! So I was thinking, What in the 
" ' world will these fish do now ?' 

" ' Yes, indeed, sir ! what are we to do ?' said they. 

" ' If you will only do as I bid you, I will take you 
" ' in my beak to a fine large pond, covered with all 
" ' the kinds of lotuses, and put you into it,' answered 
" the crane. 

" ' That a crane should take thought for the fishes 



118 



THE I1UDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



"'is a thing unheard of, sir, since the world began. 
" ' It's eating us, one alter the other, that you're aiming 
'"at !' 

"'Not I! So long as you trust mc, I won't cat 
" ' you. But if you don't believe me that there is such 
" ' a pond, send one of you with me to go and see it.' 

" Then they trusted him, and handed over to him 
" one of their number — a big fellow, blind of one eye, 
" whom they thought sharp enough in any emergency, 
" afloat or ashore. 

"Him the crane took with him, let him go in the 
"' pond, showed him the whole of it, brought him back, 
"and let him go again close to the other fish. And 
'•ho told them all the glories of the pond. 

"And when they heard what he said, they ex- 
claimed, 'All right, sir! You may take us with 
" 'you.' 

" Then the crane took the old purblind fish first to 
" the bank of the other pond, and alighted in a Varana- 
" tree growing on the bank there. But he threw it 
" into a fork of the tree, struck it with his beak and 
"killed it, and then ate its flesh, and threw its bones 
"away at the foot of the tree. Then he went back 
" and called out — 

" ' I've thrown that fish in ; let another come !' 

"And in that manner he took all the fish, one by 
"one, and ate them, till he came back and found no 
" more I 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



119 



*' But there was still a crab left behind there ; and 
" the crane thought he would eat him too, and called 
" out— 

" ' I say, good crab, I've taken all the fish away, and 
" ' put them into a fine large pond. Come along ; I'll 
" ' take you too !' 

"'But how will you take hold of me to carry me 
" 1 along ?' 

" ' I'll bite hold of you with my beak.' 

" 'You'll let me fall if you carry me like that. I 
" ' won't go with you.' 

" ' Don't be afraid ! I'll hold you quite tight all 
'•' ' the way.' 

" Then said the crab to himself, ' If this fellow once 
" ' got hold of fish, he would never let them go in a 
"'pond! Now if he should really put me into the 
"'pond, it would be capital; but if he doesn't — then 
"'I'll cut his throat and kill him!' So he said to 
"him— 

" ' Look here, friend ; you won't be able to hold me 
"'tight enough; but we crabs have a famous grip. 
" ' If you let me catch hold of you round the neck with 
" ' my claws, I shall be glad to go with you.' 

" And the other did not see that he was trying to 
"outwit him, and agreed. So the crab caught hold 
" of his neck with his claws as securely as with a pair 
" of blacksmith's pincers, and called out, ' Off with 
* " you, now !' 



120 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 



" And the crane took him and showed him the pond 7 
"and then turned off towards the Varana-trce. 

" 'Uncle !' cried the crab, ' the pond lies that way, 
" ' hut you are taking me this way !' 

" ' Oh, that's it, is it !' answered the crane. ' Your 
" ' dear little uncle, your very sweet nephew, you call 
" ' me ! You mean me to understand, I suppose, that 
" ' I am your slave, who has to lift you up and carry 
"'you about with him! Now cast your eye upon 
" ' the heap of fish-bones lying at the root of yonder 
'• Parana-tree ! Just as I have eaten those fish, every 
" ' one of them, just so I will devour you as well !' 

"'All! those fishes got eaten through their own 
" ' stupidity,' ansAvered the crab ; ' but I'm not going 
" 'to let you eat me. On the contrary, it is you that 
" ' I am going to destroy. For you in your folly have 
" ' not seen that I was outwitting you. If avc die, wo 
" ' die both together ; for I will cut off this head of 
" ' yours and cast it to the ground !' And so saying, 
"he gave the crane's neck a grip with his claws, as 
" with a vice. 

"Then, gasping, and with tears trickling from his 
" eyes, and trembling with the fear of death, the crane 
" beseeched him, saying, ' 0, my Lord ! Indeed I did 
" ' not intend to eat you ! Grant me my life !' 

"'Well, well! step down into the pond, and put 
" ' me in there.' 

"And he turned round and stepped down into the 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE KARMA. 



121 



"pond, and placed the crab on the mud at its edge. 
"But the crab cut through its neck as clean as one 
"would cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife, and 
"then only entered the water ! 

" When the Genius who lived in the Varana-tree saw 
"this strange affair, he made the wood resound with 
" his plaudits, uttering in a pleasant voice the verse — 
" The villain, though exceeding clever, 
Shall prosper not by his villany. 
He may win indeed, sharp-witted in deceit, 
But only as the Crane here from the Crab !" 

These things are an allegory. De te fabula, 
lector carissime, narratur. The shallow pond is 
the world ; the fishes are mankind ; the fine large pond 
is security, salvation; the crane, who has grown up 
with the fishes and is nourished by them, is the pre- 
valent superstition, the inherited belief; the old pur- 
blind fish — he is quite well-meaning and honest — is 
the priest ; and the crab, with the tight grasp of truth, 
is as the Arahat, the man made free by insight, who 
cuts off the head of delusion " as clean as one would 
cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife," and then only 
enters into the calm waters of security. 1 



1 On this interpretation of the fable, compare Sutta Nipata, 
veiocd 777, 93G. 



LECTURE IV. 
BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDIIA, 



One of the most valuable results to be gleaned from 
a study of Buddhism is a knowledge of the methods 
by which the early Buddhists attempted to give ex- 
pression to the deep impression of a force of character, 
and of a wisdom beyond their ken, produced in their 
minds by the striking personality of Gotama. 

To understand those methods, and to appreciate the 
lessons they convey, we must transport ourselves in 
imagination to the fifth century before the birth of 
Christ, and keep constantly before our minds the intel- 
lectual conditions among which the early Buddhists 
moved. Thus only shall we be able to follow the 
perfectly natural course of the growth of ideas con- 
cerning a perfectly natural man, whom the orthodox 
Buddhists came eventually to regard as a being quite 
different from ordinary men, and endowed with powers 
quite different from theirs. 

An attempt has often been made to draw a curious 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 123 

conclusion from the supposed fact that the date at which 
the Buddha nourished coincides pretty nearly with that 
of Pythagoras, Confucius and Zoroaster. The conclusion 
is, that the rise at the same time, quite independently, 
and in such distant lands, of four great religious 
thinkers and reformers, can only have been due to a 
certain wave of spiritual feeling then passing over the 
world. If this is a mere figure of speech, it is not 
very happily chosen, for it is both self-contradictory 
and misleading. It suggests an occult influence mak- 
ing itself felt across the earth, and contradicts the very 
hypothesis on which it rests, that the movements were 
independent; and it hides from view the probable 
explanation of so much of truth as lies behind the 
loose statement that these teachers Avere contempo- 
raneous. A more accurate chronology, even when 
stated in round numbers, would show that Pytha- 
goras was a century before Confucius, Confucius a 
century before Gotama, and Zoroaster of a date quite 
uncertain, but probably older than any of the three. 
The kind of electric thrill which our figure sup- 
poses must have been of a peculiarly wayward kind. 
Starting from Persia, it travels slowly to Greece, rests 
there for a time, returns across Persia and Mongolia 
(leaving them uninfluenced by its path) till it comes to 
China, and then returns, after a lapse of time which 
gives but small proof of vitality, to India. But the 
figure gives expression, however unsuccessfully, to a 



124 



BUDDHIST .LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



real connection which is no figure of speech, — a con- 
nection, not of actual contact by spiritual thrill or 
otherwise, but of similarity in origin. The religious 
movements, emphasized in these different countries by 
the careers of these four reformers, came after, and in 
consequence of, a long series of previous movements. 
And these previous movements were in fact so similar 
that they ran along nearly parallel lines resting on the 
common basis of Animistic conceptions. And similar 
causes acting in these parallel lines took about, though 
by no means exactly, the same time to produce corre- 
sponding results. 

What that line of dcvelopcmcnt had been in India, 
we have endeavoured in previous Lectures to show. 
The rough science and childish philosophy of Animism 
had been moulded, in much the same way as it had been 
elsewhere, and notably in Greece, into that strange 
Pantheism of the TJpanishads which, though we may 
not agree with it, we must acknowledge to be one of 
the most interesting records of honest and fearless 
inquiry handed down to us from ancient times. There 
were different schools of thought among these Pan- 
theistic philosophers, but the various schools were all 
paths to the same city. But it seems as if, in propor- 
tion as the philosophers became more thorough-going 
in their new conceptions, the theologians and the people 
became more superstitious. For the Brahman philoso- 
phers, like the French abbe's of the last century, had 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 125 

not the honesty and the boldness to secede openly, 
from the accepted belief ; and ethics were as yet qnite 
distinct from religion, which was chiefly concerned 
with forms of ritual. 1 Outside ritual and philosophy, 
the dwellers in the valley of the Ganges had little 
mental food. The poetical side of the hymns of the 
Yedas had become obscured, the epics and the drama 
of later times were as yet unborn, and the charms of 
scientific or historical inquiry were quite unknown. 



There then appeared the teacher of a new religion, 
pre-eminently ethical, anti-ritualistic, and even anti- 
philosophical. For though Gotama was highly trained 
in the current systems of philosophy, he studied them 
only, like Hume, to show their unreliability. And he 
taught that dabbling in metaphysics and speculation 
was a hindrance, not a help, to that inward growth 
which was the only thing he held to be worth striving 
, for. 

The little that can be ascertained of his real life will 
be known to any of those present who may have read 
my manual of "Buddhism." Will they excuse me if 
I rei apitulate in a few sentences, for those who have 
not, the principal facts. 



1 Compare what has been well said by Mr. Gust, Linguistic 
and Oriental Essays, p. 113. 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



Gotama was the son of a raja, a kind of potty chicf- 
tu in of the Sakya clan, who were settled some hundred 
miles north of the Ganges, on the spurs at the foot of 
the Himalaya range. The date of his birth is not 
quite eertain, as the oldest authority on the point, 
the Drpavaijsa, gives two inconsistent accounts of the 
period that elapsed between his time and that of 
Asoka. But it 'can be fixed with sufficient accuracy 
at between the middle and the end of the sixth century 
B.Q», a period daring which the conditions of the valley 
of the Ganges underwent no material change. He 
was married in early youth to his first cousin, the 
daughter of the raja over the neighbouring clan of the 
Ivoliyans, whose principal village was only a few miles 
from the village of Kapila-vatthu, in which he was 
born. TVc hear nothing more till his twenty-ninth 
year, when, after a long spiritual struggle, the causes 
and the nature of which we may guess at, but shall 
never exactly know, he finally abandoned his home. 
After first studying under teachers of- repute, from 
whom he derived uo satisfactory solution of the pro- 
blems of life, he devoted himself for six years to the 
strictest penance, by which men then thought that 
they could obtain the mastery over the gods. Though 
his efforts in this direction were such, that we are told 
of his fame having spread abroad like the sound of a 
great bell hung in the skies, this also led to no lasting 
peace. And in his thirty-fifth year he passed through a 



» * 



BUDDHIST LIVES 02? THE BUDDHA. 



127 



second great mental crisis, the details of which, as de- 
scribed in Buddhist books with all the poetry the Indian 
mind was at that time master of, are curiously similar 
to those of the temptation in the wilderness. The end 
of this struggle was reached when, under the famous 
Bo-tree at Buddha Gaya, he attained to that state of , 
mind which was afterwards called Buddhahood, and 
found at last a final solution of all his doubts and all 
his difficulties in the power over the human heart of 
inward self-culture and of love to all other beings. 

After a struggle with the not unnatural hesitation 
whether it would be of any use to make these views 
known to others, he decided to proclaim publicly the 
truth he thought he had discovered • and for forty-five 
years he walked from place to place in the valley of the 
Ganges publishing the good news, and gathering round 
him a small band of earnest and faithful followers, the 
earliest members of his afterwards famous Order. At 
last, having gained a considerable measure of success, 
he died peacefully, in the midst of his disciples, in his 
eightieth year, at Kusi-nagara in Vesali, not very far 
'beyond the Ganges from the scene of his early studies. 

Such are the simple facts of the career of the man 
whose life has been more momentous in its influence 
upon a large proportion of the human race than that of 
any other man who has ever lived. But is this the 
view of Gotama's life which has been recorded by his 
disciples in the Buddhist books themselves? 



128 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



The analogy of similar records in the case of other 
religions founders, would load us. to expect that the 
followers of the great Indian teacher would not be 
satisfied by looking upon their master as a mere ordi- 
, nary man ; and this expectation is abundantly fulfilled. 
They endeavoured to give expression to their deep 
feelings of homage and of hero-worship, to their deep 
sense of inferiority, to the deep impression made upon 
them by the personal power of a character quite un- 
equalled among all the men they knew or heard of, by 
describing the glory and the grandeur of their Buddha 
in poetical and figurative language always liable to be 
misunderstood, and hardening too soon into erroneous 
beliefs. 

When we call to mind how great was the similarity 
of the outward conditions under which Christianity and 
Buddhism arose, how strikingly analogous in many 
respects were the mental qualities of the early Chris- 
tians to those of the early Buddhists, how closely the 
personal feelings of the first Christian disciples to the 
Christ resembled those of the first Buddhist disciples 
to the Buddha, we are naturally very strongly interested 
to learn what was the effect in the case of early Bud- 
dhism of causes which must also have operated in the 
histoiy of early Christianity. But the value of the 
comparison will be lost unless we bear also in mind 
the many differences in the two cases, as well as their 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



129 



resemblances. We must no more expect to find that 
the histories of early Buddhist and early Christian 
beliefs as to the person of their respective teachers will 
be, even in the smallest statement, exactly the same, 
than we expect to find that the growth of Pantheism 
out of Polytheism, in the valley of the Ganges and on 
the shores of the Mediterranean, was in all respects 
identical. We have to deal merely with similarities, 
not with identities. 



The early Buddhist ideas of the Buddha were chiefly 
modified by two ideals dominating the minds of men 
in those days, neither of which had any necessary con- 
nection with the particular individual whom we know 
by the name of Gotama, so that both might have been 
equally well applied to any other person in India, if he 
had only excited the same feelings. The one ideal was 
chiefly due to political experiences, the other to philo- 
sophical speculations; the one was the ideal of a King 
of Eighteousness, the other of an all-perfect Wisdom, 

Just at the time when the early Buddhist literature 
regarding Gotama was reaching its canonical form, and 
the ideas of the Buddhists regarding him were being 
developed into what are now the orthodox views, the 
ancient political framework of Indian society was un- 
ci joiag an inevitable and important change. The 

K 



130 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



older division into clans, some of them patriarchal, 
some of them aristocratic republics, was passing into 
the more modern division into nations. A new power 
had arisen, and was making itself very clearly felt — 
the power of an autocratic king. At the end of the 
fourth century B.C., there had already been dynasties 
of kings in the two most powerful countries on the 
banks of the Ganges, Kosala and. Magadha. And we 
then hear of the first great sovereign — that Chandra - 
gutta avIio possibly met with Alexander ; with whom 
certainly Alexander's successor, Seloukos Nikator, first 
fought and then entered into treaty ; and whose power 
extended from the eastern Ganges to beyond the Punjab, 
and from the Himalaya mountains down to the Vindhya 
range. His victories and his far-reaching dominion 
brought home to the people the idea of a^universal 
monarch. 

They combined with this idea a theory, common to all 
progressive peoples in ancient times, incorporated into 
almost all the ancient religions, and derived from a very 
natural dissatisfaction with existing affairs — that theory 
of a golden age which men used to think must certainly 
have existed, in the past, and which the modern belief, 
based on more accurate knowledge, places, with equal 
certitude, in the future. The ideal monarch, the 
Chakka-vatti, was a king of kings, irresistible and 
mighty, who ruled in righteousness over a happy 
people. He is often described in the Buddhist Suttas 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



131 



as "a king of kings, a righteous man who ruled in 
" righteousness, lord of the four quarters of the earth, 
"invincible, the protector of his people, possessor of 
"the seven royal treasures." The details of these 
royal treasures, and of four wonderful gifts, often asso- 
ciated with them as distinguishing marks of a king of 
kings, are particularly interesting as 'being compounded 
of the ancient and half-forgotten poetry of the sun- 
myth, and of the new and powerful ethics of Buddhism. 
When the stories told of the old gods, of the external 
spirits supposed to animate the powers of nature, and 
especially of the sun-god in his battles with the storm, 
had become misunderstood, the heroes of these stories 
were taken to be men, half human, half divine, and 
the glorious attributes ascribed to them were naturally 
applied and adapted to the new ideal. 

The first of these treasures was the treasure of the 
Wheel, with its nave, its tire, and all its thousand 
spokes complete, which appears to the great king, when 
he has purified himself, and has gone up into the upper 
storey of his palace to keep the sacred day. The wheel 
is taken from the Yedic poetry, in which the sun had 
been described as rolling on in his victorious course 
across the space of heaven. And like the sun, when 
the wondrous wheel appears to the great king, it 
rolls onwards to the very extremities of the world 
conquering and to conquer. But the wheel of the 
annVnt sun-worship is now subordinated to the king 

k 2 



132 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



who has purified himself. It only subjugates the 
other kings it meets with to subject them to the 
righteous monarch, who lays down the' sacred Bud- 
dhist laws : "Ye shall slay no living thing ! Ye shall 
'•'not take what has not been given! Ye shall 
" not act wrongly touching the bodily desires ! Ye 
"shall speak no lie"! Ye shall drink no maddening 
" drink S" And in subjugating them, it brings the 
conquered ones under no lawless tyranny, for the ideal 
king then confirms his willing subjects in all their 
ancient privileges and rights. 1 

Secondly, the king of kings is the possessor of the 
wonderful White Elephant, which can carry its 
master across the broad earth to its very ocean boun- 
dary, and return home again in time for the morning 
meal. This is adapted from the mythical elephant 
Airavata, " the Fertilizer," on which the sun-god Indra 
rides, the personification of the great, white, fertilizing 
rain-cloud, so rapid in its passage before the winds of 
the monsoon over the vault of heaven. 2 

Thirdly, the king of kings is the possessor of the 
Treasure of the Horse, "all -white, with a black 
"head and a dark mane, wonderful in power, flying 



1 This is the full meaning of the yathabhuttarj bhufijatha of 
the text. Comp. Eh. D., Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, 
p. 253. 

2 See Senart, Legende du Bouddha, pp. 25 — 27, and Professor 
A. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 241. 



BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA. 133 

" through the sky, the charger-king whose name was 
" Thunder-Cloud." The description is sufficient evi- 
dence of this figure being also derived from the ancient 
mythology, and from a part of it which has survived 
down to our own times, through the influence of the 
Greeks, in the horses of the sun. And it is easy to 
understand why the Western nations preserved this 
image of the ancient cloud-poetry rather than the last. 

Fourthly, the king of kings is the possessor of a 
wondrous Gem, called the Veluriya, from which 
our word beryl is probably derived, "bright, of the 
'' purest species, with eight facets, excellently wrought, 
"clear, transparent, perfect in every way." 

That the gem was included among the royal treasures 
need not surprise us, and would seem to be explicable 
without any reference to the Yedic poetry. But when 
we find that " the splendour of that wondrous gem 
"spread round about a league on every side," and that 
"when the great king of glory, to test that wondrous 
" gem, set all his four-fold army in array, and raised 
" aloft the gem upon his standard-top, he was able to 
" march out in the gloom and darkness of the night, 
"and all the dwellers round about began their daily 
"work, thinking, 'The daylight hath appeared!'" we 
see that we have to do with no ordinary jewel. And 
when we recollect that the lightning with which Indra, 
in the hymns, slays the demon of the darkness, is called 
his jewel, and that mystical gems have survived in the 



m nniiisr lives of the buddiia. 



later popular beliefs as gifted with supernatural powers, 
able to carry their happy possessors through the sky, 
or obtain for them prosperity and wealth, we see that 
here also we have a reminiscence of the poetry and 
mysticism of that Animism which is so hard to kill. 

Fifthly, the king of kings is the possessor of a 
Pearl among Women, "graceful in figure, lovely 
"in appearance, charming in manner, and beautiful 
''iu complexion; surpassing human beauty, she had 
" attained unto the beauty of the gods !" The two last 
treasures arc a Treasurer and an Adviser, faithful 
servants, like the Pearl among women, of the king of 
kings. These arc not apparently or necessarily adopted 
from the Vedic hymns, and the descriptions of them 
contain no details of peculiar interest : we can there- 
fore pass on to the four Iddhis or wonderful gifts with 
which he is said to have been endowed. 

These are simply such, qualities of body and mind as 
would naturally be ascribed to the ideal king. lie is, 
in the first place, "graceful in figure, handsome in 
"appearance, and pleasing in manner, beyond what 
" other men are." Secondly, he was " of long life, and 
" of many years, beyond those of other men." Thirdly, 
he was "free from disease, and from bodily suffering, 
" beyond what other men are." And fourthly, he was 
" beloved and popular with Brahmans and with laymen 
>-alike." As a father is near and dear to his sons, so 
is he said to have been to them; and as sons are near 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 135 



and dear to their father, so were they to him. Once, it 
is related, he was proceeding in royal pomp to his plea- 
sure-ground. The people besought him, saying, " 
"king, pass slowly by, that we may look upon thee for 
" a longer time !" But he, addressing his charioteer, 
replies, " Drive on the chariot slowly, charioteer, that 
" I may look upon my people for a longer time !" 
Such is the courtesy and such the mutual love which 
reigns in the golden age between the monarch and the 
people of his realm. Such is the Buddhist picture of 
the ideal king. 

"We shall be able better to enter into the feelings 
which prompted the early Buddhists in their appli- 
cation of this ideal to Gotama, if we call to mind the 
manner in which the Jewish ideal of a Messiah influ- 
enced the minds of the early Christians. The two 
ideals are of course not the same in detail, for they 
grew out of very different experiences, and were 
clothed in words drawn from very different literatures. 
But they are so remarkably similar, both in the sources, 
political and spiritual, from which they sprung, and in 
their most essential features, that the comparison of 
the two cannot fail to be historically instructive. 

In the first place, just as the Messiah whom the 
Hebrews expected was very unlike him to whom the 
word was afterwards applied, so the Cakka-vatti was 
very unlike what Gotama really was. The ideals existed 
before their supposed fulfilment ; and they were only 



330 



I5UDDIIIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



fulfilled by lining- put to a use so iinthouglit of by those 
avIio held them, that they really ceased, as ideals, to 
exist. The Christian Messiah is as much higher and 
more noble than the previous conception of the first- 
century Jews, as the Buddhist King of Bighteousness 
is higher and more noble than the previous Hindu 
conception of the King of Kings. 

One may be allowed to say this without being sup- 
posed to detract from the great beauty of those earlier 
conceptions. We cannot but sympathize with that 
natural longing — to which Carlyle gave such varied 
and energetic expression — for the great man whose 
strong hand shall cut the gordian knot of the compli- 
cated difficulties of life, and shall set all things straight. 
And when we find that peoples so distant and so dif- 
ferent as the Jews and the Indian Aryans, when ima- 
gining what kind of man such a man must be, built up 
such grand and glorious fancies as those of the Messiah 
and the Cakka-vatti, it can only strengthen our faith 
in humanity. But it was surely a truer instinct which 
guided the early Christians and the early Buddhists, 
when the eyes of their minds had been opened by 
the new teaching, to put the Teacher in the place of 
the King, and to look for the ideal kingdom in a 
kingdom of righteousness in the hearts of men. It was 
a change greater even, perhaps, than they really saw ; 
for it made the motive-power, the strength, the hope 
of the new kingdom, to lie in the change of character 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 137 

in the individuals. It logically replaced the vain 
craving after a deus ex machina in the guise of a 
benevolent despot, by the sure and certain hope of a 
wise philanthropy in the gradual elevation of mankind. 

But the Buddhists, at least, had no such foresight 
as to draw this logical conclusion ; they had only the 
insight to recognize in their Master the true Cakka- 
vatti. And when seeking for words and images in 
which to express their awe and love to him, they 
allowed the ideal of the Cakka-vatti to influence them 
in two ways. They used it, in the first place, as a type 
to which their descriptions of the Master, as their King 
of Righteousness, should conform. His chief disciple, 
Sariputta, became known as the Prime Minister in that 
kingdom, and the Arahats were the body-guard of the 
king, who gave them the Silas (the lower morality 
described in the second Lecture) as a cloak, earnest 
meditation as a breastplate, continual mindfulness as a 
shield, patience as a staff, the Dhamma or true doctrine 
as a sword that overcomes all things incompatible with 
the Silas, and the insight of Arahatship as a gem to 
adorn their helmet. It was a battle they had to fight, 
a victory they had to win, under a Leader who himself 
had gone on in front to show the way. The rain-cloud, 
which Avas the appanage of the Cakka-vatti, rained 
down in the new teaching the ambrosia (Amata) of 
Arahatship, the fertilizer of all right desires, the ex- 
tinguisher of the fatal fires of lust, of hatred, and of 



138 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



ignorance. And the mystic wheel became the wheel 
of the Dhamma, which the King of Righteousness him- 
self had set rolling onwards in the first discourse he 
uttered — that supreme wheel of the empire of truth 
which not by any Samana or Brahman, not by any 
god, not by any Brahma or Mara, not by any being 
in the universe, can ever be turned back. Invincibly 
shall it roll onwards to the very boundaries of the 
world, until all the kings of the earth shall have 
become willing subjects of the mild empire of its lord, 
obedient followers of the law of truth ! 

It is an instructive instance of the way in which 
spiritual figures of speech harden and crystallize, in 
ignorant minds, into erroneous beliefs and baneful super- 
stitions, that this beautiful parable, the only "turning 
of the wheel of the Dhamma" which we hear of in early 
Buddhism, has given rise to the use of the well-known 
praying-wheels — those curious machines which, filled 
with endless repetitions of a form of sacred words 
(themselves unknown in the earlier teaching), stand in 
the towns in every open place, are put up beside the 
foot-paths and the roads, and even, by the help of sails 
like those of windmills, are turned by every breeze 
which blows over the thrice sacred realm of the pope- 
king of the valleys of Tibet. 

But, secondly — and here the early Buddhists were 
not so wise — they allowed their ideal of the Cakka- 
vatti to influence their beliefs as to the actual facts of 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



139 



the outward conditions of Gotama's life. The petty 
chief, his father, became a powerful monarch of wide- 
spread dominions, though the geographical details of 
the legend really show to the slightest criticism how 
limited was the extent of the Sakya clan over whom 
he held only a modified chieftainship. The modest 
dwelling in which Gotama was bom becomes a palace. 
The literature of somewhat later times provides him on 
his marriage with three palaces, one for use in each of 
the three seasons of the year. And he is supposed 
to have been brought up amidst every dignity and 
luxury which the minds of the Buddhist poets can 
conceive. 

There are unmistakable traces in many of these 
details — into which I have no time to enter, and which 
vary in every book, growing in magnificence as the 
interval of time grows greater — of the ancient glory 
of the sun-god. And they also seem to me to afford 
undeniable evidence of a desire in the relators of these 
legends to express — in the same spirit as has inspired 
many Christian writers — the greatness of Gotama's 
renunciation. This is the motive which leads them to 
raise to the highest pitch the glories of the position he 
abandoned, when he is related to have left his father's 
throne, to which he, the only son, was heir ; to have 
left his young wife and his only child behind him ; to 
have left his bright home, with all its glories and 
delights, and to have gone out into the darkness of the 



EUDDIIIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



night, to become a despised mendicant, and a lonely, 
homeless wanderer. The gorgeous descriptions of what 
he had resigned are indications, not only of the sources 
of Buddhist poetry, hut also of the fact that the deepest 
impression he made upon his disciples was the lesson 
of Self-renunciation, that Selbst-todtung, annihilation 
of self, which, according to one of our latest prophets, 
'•is justly reckoned the beginning of all virtue." 1 

There is a modern poem by an English writer — Mr. 
Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia — which has caught 
very successfully, as it seems to me, the tone and spirit 
of the later forms of this side of the Cakka-vatti 
legends, and has given expression in elocpient words to 
the thoughts that stirred the hearts of the Buddhists 
of those times. And vrhen Ave call to mind the process 
through which it has become possible for a Christian 
poet to sing of the carpenter's Son, 

" His Father's home of light, 
His rainbow-circled throne, 
He left for earthly night, 
For wanderings sad and lone," 2 

we shall be able to read between the lines of these 
Buddhist Cakka-vatti legends, and to recognize in them, 
not merely empty falsehoods, the offspring of folly or 



1 Carlyle, Jesuitism, p. 257. 

2 Hymns, Ancient and Modem, 239. 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



141 



of fraud, but the only embodiment possible, under those 
conditions, of some of the noblest feelings that have 
ever moved the world. 



Besides the ideal king, the personification of Power 
and Justice, another ideal has played an important part 
in the formation of early Buddhist ideas regarding 
their Master. This ideal, too, owed its birth at least 
to reminiscences of Yedic thought; but I venture to 
think, though the question is as yet beset with diffi- 
culties, that it had its principal developement during 
the later times in which the Buddhist Suttas were 
gradually assuming their , present shape. It was the 
ideal of a perfectly Wise Man, the personification of 
"Wisdom, the Buddha. 

It had been held by the pre-Buddhistic Aryans in 
India that holy men, by properly performed ritual, by 
suitable sacrifice, could, in fact, compel the gods to 
yield to their irresistible influence ; and that a life of 
self-denial and penance, joined with mysterious wisdom, 
would give to men superhuman power. The belief in 
transmigration, that the efficacy' of deeds clone in one 
life would be carried over to the next, gave to this idea 
additional force-; while among the early Buddhists it 
received further confirmation from the supreme impor- 



142 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



tancc attached by Gotama to self- renunciation, to intel- 
lectual self- culture, and to wisdom. 

There thus sprung up this ideal of the Buddha, the 
man who, through countless ages of heroic struggle 
in many different births, had at last attained to such 
perfect purity and perfect wisdom, that he was aide, 
when goodness was dying out on earth, and men had 
become more and more wicked and depraved, to extin- 
guish by his teaching the fires of their passion, to lead 
them along the way of escape from the net of transmi- 
gration, and thus in that evil time to save a lost world 
from impending ruin. 

It was perhaps the memory of the great sages of old, 
the Eishis of the older teaching, that led the early 
Buddhists, if not Gotama himself, to believe that there 
had been previous Buddhas before Gotama. At first 
this belief was perhaps confined to the. seven Buddhas 
(seven, that is, including Gotama himself), of whom 
separate mention is made in several of the Suttas. But 
already in some of the latest books included in the Pali 
Pitakas we hear of twenty-seven Buddhas, and in later 
times the number of these previous Buddhas was be- 
lieved to be innumerable. And in the latest phases of 
the doctrine, as held in Xepal and in Tibet, this world 
was held to have come into being through a series or 
chain of emanations, in which these previous Bud- 
dhas form the connecting links. 

There is a great deal in these later emanations which 



BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA. 



143 



remind us of the Emanations of the Gnostic Christians ; 
and the ideal of the Buddha has, even in early Bud- 
dhism, an influence similar, in many respects, to that 
of the Logos in early Christianity, But the divine 
element in the Gnostic theory distinguishes it from the 
Buddhist ideal Wisdom, just as the divine and solar 
elements in the Buddhist ideal king distinguish him 
from the ideal Messiah of the later pre-Christian Jews. 

It was Gotama himself, in all probability, who gave 
the start to this latter phase of the new Buddhist con- 
ceptions, by his own belief, as recorded in the Suttas, 
that he was himself a Buddha. It is true that the writ- 
ings of the early Buddhists are open to most suspicion 
precisely where they speak of the person of the Buddha. 
The doctrines of Buddhism are so original, and so far 
beyond the capacity of the early Buddhists, it is so 
very probable that before the end of his long career 
Gotama himself had completely worked out and enun- 
ciated them, that we may rely with less doubt upon 
the records of the Buddhist ethical system, than upon 
' what the early Buddhists, profoundly influenced by the 
feelings to which reference has just been made, have 
said about their revered Master himself. But the 
belief in his own Buddhahood is placed, in the very 
oldest parts of the Pitakas, so often in Gotama's mouth, 
and at such important crises in his career, that it is 
hard not to believe that the tradition is, in this respect, 
correct. And it receives also what seems to me to be 



144 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



a very real support from the unquestioned facts that 
■other teachers under similar conditions have held simi- 
lar "belief's regarding themselves. 

Thus, after the close of that greatest of all events in 
his life, his long struggle and final victory over Mara, 
the Evil One, in the jungle, and the subsequent long 
fast of four times seven days, Gotama is said to have 
announced his Buddhahood to the first person whom he 
meets. He was then on his way to Benares to publish 
the good news of the truth he had just found to his five 
friends, the Pancavaggiya ascetics. The account in the 
Pali Introduction to the Book of Buddhist Birth Stories 
goes on : 

" The five ascetics, seeing already from afar the 
" Buddha coming, said one to another, 'Friend! hero 
"'comes the Samana Gotama. He has turned aside 
" ' again to the free use of the necessaries of life, and 
" 'has recovered roundness of form, acuteness of sense, 
" ' and beauty of complexion. We ought to pay him 
"'no reverence; but as he is, after all, of a good 
"'family, he deserves the honour of a seat. So we 
" ' will simply prepare a seat for him.' 

" Then the Blessed One, casting about in his mind 
"(by the power that he had of knowing what was 
"going on in the thoughts of all beings) as to what 
"they were thinking of, knew their thoughts. And 
" concentrating that feeling of his love which was aide 
"to pervade generally all beings in earth and heaven, 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 145 

"he directed it specially towards them. So the sense 
" of his love diffused itself through their hearts. And 
"as he came nearer and nearer, unable any longer to 
"adhere to their resolve, they arose from their seats, 
" and bowed down before him, and welcomed him with 
"every demonstration of respect. But not knowing 
"that he had become a Buddha, they addressed him, 
"in everything they said, either by name or as ' Good 
" 'friend !' Then the Blessed One announced to them 
" his Buddhahood, saying: '0 Samanas, address not 
'"a Buddha by his name or as Good friend ! And I, 
" ' Samanas, am become a Buddha, as those who 
" ' have gone before !' ' rl 

The expression used here in the oldest account of 
this meeting known to me (that in the first Khandhaka) 2 
is Araharj Samma-sambuddho, words very fami 
liar to all who read native Buddhist books, as they are 
repeated on the opening page of each treatise. They 
seem to me to be perfectly simple in meaning, and not 
to hide any mystery at all. Araharj is an Arahat, 
one who has reached the end of Gotama's so-called 
Noble Path, and is free from the fatal dispositions of 
mind to sensuality, individuality, delusion and igno- 
rance. Sam ma is perfect, complete in all its parts ; 
and Sambudclha is merely, as we should say, "a 
" very Buddha." 

1 Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 112. 

2 Mahavagga, i. 6, 12. 

L 



146 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



There were, namely, two kinds of Buddhas or men 
of insight ; firstly, those who have seen through things, 
and being free from delusions (more especially the 
delusions of Animistic views on the one hand, and of 
worldliness on the other) are completely, so to speak, 
out of the jungle, and in the open. But they cannot 
trace back the several parts of the path by which they 
have themselves escaped, so as to be able to guide 
others along it. They are Pacceka-Buddhas, that 
is, "enlightened only for one." Quite emancipated 
themselves, they are like a revelation in some unknown 
tongue, from which others can receive no immediate 
deliverance; or, to take a modern instance, like one 
who holds perfectly sound views of science or of his- 
tory, and never therefore talks heresy, but through 
want of enthusiasm, absence of the power of exposition, 
moral timidity, or fear of being detected in a fault, 
observes so discreet a silence that his knowledge dies 
with him. Only at rare intervals, once and again in 
hundreds of ages, docs "a very Buddha," one who has 
the insight and can also make others see, appear in the 
world, and happy are they who meet him. As was 
said in the passage I read last Tuesday week from the 
Tevijja Sutta, he not only himself " understands and 
"sees as it were face to face," but "he makes his 
"knowledge known to others. He proclaims the 
"Dhamma, the Truth, both in its letter and in its 
"spirit; he makes known the higher life in all its 
" purity and in all its perfectness." 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 147 

All this is of peculiar interest from the comparative 
point of view. It is an expression from the Buddhist 
standpoint, which excludes the theory of a Supreme 
Deity, of an idea very similar to that which is expressed 
in Christian writings when Christ is represented as the 
manifestation of God to men, the Logos, the Word of 
God made flesh, the Bread of Life. And it is not a 
mere chance that heterodox followers of the two reli- 
gions have afterwards used the Buddha and the Logos 
conceptions as bases of their emanation theories. It is 
only a fresh instance of the way in which similar ideas 
in similarly constituted minds come to be modified in 
very similar ways. 

The Cakka-vatti Buddha was to the early Buddhists 
what the Messiah Logos was to the early Christians. 
In both cases the two ideas overlap one another, run 
into one another, supplement one another. In both 
cases the two combined cover as nearly the same ground 
as the different foundations of the two teachings will 
permit. And it is the Cakka-vatti Buddha circle ol' 
ideas in the one case, just as the Messiah Logos in the 
other, that has had the principal influence in determin- 
ing the opinions of the early disciples as to the person 
of their Master. The method followed in the early 
Buddhist and early Christian biographies of their 
respective Masters was the same, and led to similar 
results ; though the details are in no particular quite 
identical in the two cases. 

l 2 



I is 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



Before venturing to suggest what seems to me to 
be the only obvious conclusion to be drawn from this 
parallel, I would add that besides these two ideals of 
Power and Wisdom, the reverse of discreditable to 
those who formed and held them, other influences 
were by no means without weight in the formation of 
the Buddhist lives of Gotama. It is a universal 
tendency, exemplified not only in ancient lives of 
popular saints and of popular heroes, but in modern 
every-day life, to discover in the childhood of men 
who have afterwards become eminent or famous, clear 
pn lmi'isI icatiniis of their future greatness. As these 
discoveries are made after the event, they are often 
apposite enough ; and in the case of the King of 
J'ightcousncss, they took the shape that he descended 
of his own accord into his mother's womb from his 
throne in heaven ; that at his birth heaven and earth 
united to pay him homage ; Avhile the angels sang their 
songs of victory, and archangels were present with their 
help. His mother was the best and purest of the 
daughters of men, and had no other son ; and his con- 
ception took place without the aid of his father. His 
mother has dreams of his future greatness ; and there 
arc prophecies at his birth that her son will become 
either a C'akka-vatti or a Buddha, who will remove 
the veils of ignorance and sin from the world. In his 
youth he excels all his companions, and even teaches 



BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 



14'J 



the teachers who were appointed to instruct him; 
while aged saints unite to pay him honour, and sing 
hymns to his praise. 

All these details were doubtless purely imaginary. 
But they were not due to one mind ; they were the work 
of time, and no one who bore a part in their creation 
was consciously manufacturing untruth. The early bio- 
graphers did not sufficiently distinguish between what 
they thought ought to have happened and what did 
really happen, between that which seemed edifying to 
them and that which was true in fact. But I cannot 
believe that they ever set to work deliberately to 
forge an)' part of their narrative. 

And this brings us to a fourth cause to which much 
that is legendary is due. Their natural belief that the 
miraculous Avas probable, their abiding faith in the 
constant presence of supernatural beings, in the con- 
stant action of supernatural causes, led the early Bud- 
dhists easily to see what they so fully expected to 
find. The struggles of Gotama's mind become the 
temptations of Mara, the spirit of Evil ; his moments 
of exaltation are ascribed to the visits of angels ; his 
thoughts of resolution or of triumph become songs in 
angel mouths; and a few circumstances, explicable 
even now as natural, are related as miraculous events. 

A few details, but these are later, are due to yet 
another cause. There were local relics to. be sancti- 
fied, local legends to receive authority from the sacred 



150 



rrmwriST lives of the luddha. 



story. The ( leylonesc claim to possess one of Gotama's 
teeth and the hones of his neck. They consequently 
believe and relate an episode in his life explaining 
how these relics were obtained. 1 The Burmese have 
another tooth and another strange story to support it. 2 
Bui none of these stories arc to be found in the Pitaka 
account of the Buddha's death, which is indeed incon- 
sistent with them all. 3 And in a similar way stories 
not found in the earliest authorities occur in the later 
books, according to which images then existing had 
been actually made in the very lifetime of the Teacher. 4 
Finally, when all the incredible details due to the 
different causes just referred to have been deducted, 
there remain a certain number of miraculous incidents 
which are apparently due to the mere love of the 
marvellous, the origin of which cannot at present be 
ascribed to any more definite source than the depraved 
and weak imagination of the narrators, who did not 
perceive that these stories, so far from heightening, 
really veiled and lowered their idea of Gotama, and 
were irreconcilable with the real facts of his life. 



1 Dathavarjsa, ii. 51, 52. 

2 Bigandet, Legend of the Burmese Buddha, p. 343. 

3 Maha-parinibbana Sutta, vi. 35 — 62. 

4 Koppcn, Geschichtc des Buddhismus, i. 00 } ii. 63, 102. 



BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA. 



151 



There now arises the very natural question, whether 
all this is any proof that the Christian writers, who 
lived about five hundred years after the Buddhist 
writers, borrowed their ideas from India ? The resem- 
blances are so very striking, that this question has often 
been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative ; but 
more often, I think, in popular lectures and in maga- 
zine articles than in independent books, and more often 
by those who are glad to throw discredit on Christian- 
ity than by serious scholars. The fullest treatment of 
it from this last point of view is, however, in a very 
learned work by a writer of thoroughly earnest and 
unbiassed mind, I mean the Angel Messiah of Bud- 
dhists, Essenes and Christians, by Mr. Ernest de 
Bunsen. The curious reader will find in this volume 
a very exhaustive statement of all the possible channels 
through which such a borrowing by the Christians 
from the Buddhists can be supposed to have taken 
place. There is neither time nor space at the close of 
this Lecture to enter upon the long and varied argu- 
ment which is there set forth. I will only say that I 
have carefully considered it throughout with a mind 
quite open to conviction, and that I can find no evi- 
dence whatever of any actual and direct communication 
of any of these ideas from the East to the West, 
Where the Gospel narratives resemble the Buddhist 
ones, they seem to me to have been independently 



102 EUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 

developed on the shores of the Mediterranean and in 
the valley of the Ganges ; and strikingly similar as 
they often arc at first sight, the slightest comparison 
is sufficient to show that they rested throughout on a 
basis of doctrine fundamentally opposed. 

If this view be correct, it remains therefore that the 
similarities of idea are evidence not of any borrowing 
from the one side or the other, but of similar feelings 
in-, ndcivd in men's minds by similar experiences ; an 
explanation which fully accounts not only for all tin; 
similarities, but also for all the differences. And when 
it is considered that only twice in the history of the 
world have all the circumstances combined to render 
the origin of such ideas possible, it must be acknow- 
ledged that the lessons drawn from the study of early 
Buddhism may be found as useful for the true appre- 
ciation of early Christianity as the Vedas are useful 
for the true appreciation of classical mythology. Or, 
i;i other words, that those who are willing to discuss 
both religions on the same principles may expect to 
find, in the history of early Buddhism, not only an 
historical example by which they may test their 
methods of investigation, but an historical parallel 
from which they may condescend to learn. 



LECTURE V. 



GOTAMA'S OKDER. 



Among the points of Buddhist history most instruc- 
tive from a comparative point of view, there is probably 
none more important than the fate of Gotama's San gha, 
the Community or Society of those who had given up 
the world to carry out the new ideas. For, as in tho 
case of his ethical system, so also in the practical 
organization of this body of his more earnest and 
devoted adherents, he made use of already existing 
ideas and customs. 

The valley of the Ganges in the sixth century before 
the Christian era was a land which did not contain 
a single book or a single church. There were no 
preachers in it, no editors, nothing like what we 
should call a universitjr. There were the Brahman 
schools of ritual; and, as part of the ritual was the 
repetition of sacred words, grammar and recitation 
were taught there as accessories to correct learning by 



K>1 



gotama's order. 



heart and accurate repetition. And in these schools 
codes of ancient customs were handed down by word 
of mouth. 

But those who had some thoughts of their own to 
propound, something to say apart from tradition, were 
in the habit of gathering disciples round them in the 
same way as was done in Greece by the philosophers, 
at a time when tilings had there reached a corre- 
sponding point in the parallel developcmcnts of these 
two communities. There seem to have been not a few 
of such self-elected teachers. They led for the most 
part very simple lives ; depending for their subsistence' 
en the voluntary offerings of the multitude (always 
ready and even eager to worship). And while there 
was no little sophistry, and a good deal of jugglery, 
mental and manual, practised among them, there were 
also in their ranks not a few really earnest and by no 
means altogether unsuccessful inquirers. It is worth 
notice in passing that several of these sophists were 
women (though there are traces of the disfavour with 
which the severer spirits, even in far-off times, looked 
upon that phase of the movement), and that the majority 
of them belonged to one or other of the lower castes. 
They had of course not the faintest suspicion of sci- 
entific or historical methods of inquiry. They fully 
believed they could stretch straight out and grasp the 
ultimate truth, like children reaching forth to seize 
the moon — a hope that has not yet faded away, as we 



GOTAMA.' S OEDEE. 



155 



see from the case of those among us now who argue, 
as it were, from their own hearth-rugs upwards. And 
being unacquainted with any language save their own, 
conclusions about words seemed to them as real as 
conclusions about things. It was no unusual thing for 
them to wander from place to place ready to maintain 
theses against all the world. And there was great 
public interest in such tournaments, which it was the 
custom to terminate by the vanquished acknowledging 
the victor as his master, and entering the ranks of his 
disciples. 

We have grown out of such things since the days of 
Luther; and the confusion of tongues has helped us 
to understand that we cannot build a tower up to 
heaven by laying words on words. We have some- 
thing of the insight of humility ; and, aiming not so 
high, are beginning to make a surer progress by steps 
that can never be thrown down. Gotama went as far 
as was possible in those times in the same direction. 
He looked at all the systems as Hume looked at the 
philosophies ; and the Buddhist Suttas seem never tired 
of representing him as inveighing against ditthi, 
liter illy Yiew, and its "viewy" or "crotchety" 
professors. 

But the real analogue to Gotama, as we should 
naturally expect, is a man of very different character 
from David Hume, and of much less modern mind. 
In his place in history, in his methods" of exposition, 



156 gotama's order. 

in many of his personal qualities, Gotama stands side 
by side with Socrates: and it is strange that the com- 
parison has never been thus pointed out before. But 
in one most important particular he was much more 
than Socrates. lie had a completely elaborated scheme 
of practical life, a carefully thought-out system of 
inward self-culture, to put in the place of the systems 
of philosophy on the one hand, and those of ritual on 
the other. It was. the desire to carry out this system 
into practice that led to the establishment of his Society, 
and that imposed upon it its peculiar character. 

It was at first, no doubt, simply a body of disciples. 
Like the other teachers, Gotama and his followers 
lived on alms; like them, they adopted a peculiar dress; 
like them, they sought for converts ; and, as in other 
such bodies, their numbers were constantly changing, 
individuals joining or leaving the general body as they 
£< It disposed. A slight difference brought about the first 
important change. In the case of other teachers, the dis- 
ciples were dependent on the presence of the Master ; 
and there being no appeal to the masses, the number of 
disciples was kept within moderate limits. The success 
of Buddhism in its earliest years has doubtless been 
somewhat exaggerated in the Pali Suttas. But when 
we recollect that Gotama's system of self -training was 
one which all were invited to adopt, and which could 
be carried out irrespective of residence at any particular 
spot or in any particular company, we can easily 



gotama's order. 



157 



understand how it came to pass that the disciples were 
not confined only to those who could remain with the 
Master. Either during his visits, or at other times, 
these isolated followers would receive fresh adherents ; 
and it was in consequence of the number of such 
accessions, according to the Ivhandakas, that permission 
came to be granted to Gotama's disciples to receive 
fresh disciples into the Society without consulting or 
referring the matter to him. From that moment the 
existence of the Society was assured, even after its 
founder had passed away. The body of personal fol- 
lowers had become an Order — the oldest, as it is the 
most numerous and the most influential, of all the 
numerous Orders of religious brethren which the 
world has seen. 

In order at all to understand either Buddhism itself 
or the significance of the history of Buddhism, we must 
endeavour, however difficult the task may be, to enter 
into the feelings of those who were induced thus to 
give up everything in order to devote themselves to a 
mode of life which Englishmen as a rule regard with 
something approaching very nearly to contempt. I 
would not quarrel with that feeling. What we shall 
have to set forth in this Lecture will show, indeed, 
how great is its excuse, or perhaps even its justifica- 
tion ; and it no doubt depends in reality upon what is 
the surest basis for. correct judgment on such questions, 
upon the lessons of history. I would only protest 



gotama's order. 



against what seems to me to be the abuse of it — a 
closing of one's eyes to what can be said on the other 
side, the attaching of an exaggerated importance to 
those things which the recluse, perhaps rightly, looks 
down upon as worse than worthless. 

In Gotama's time the experiment had not as yet been 
fully tried, and we can scarcely wonder that its dangers 
had not been foreseen. There is a dissatisfaction 
attached to the pursuit of wealth, there is an unreality 
in social success, there arc sorrows inseparably involved 
in family life, that must strike the most careless ob- 
server, and that soon impress themselves upon those 
who do not observe, but only experience. There are 
problems in life that baffle the acutest inquiry; and 
when the turn of affairs has brought these problems to 
the front, without offering any other solution, it is not 
unnatural to men to suppose that at least an escape 
from them can be found in the quiet life of the cloister, 
where peace and calmness reign. 

It is this longing after peace that gives us the clue 
to the strange fact that hundreds and thousands, in 
Buddhist and in Christian countries, have given up all 
things else that men live and long for, counting them 
but as dross. So we are told in the Khandhakas that 
when the people were astonished that the great and 
famous Brahman, Kassapa of Urn vein, had left all to 
join the new Teacher, and the latter asks him to 
explain it, saying : 



gotama's order. 



159 



" What hast thou seen, thou of Uruvela, 
That thou, for penances so far renowned, 
Forsakest thus thy sacrificial fire ? 
I ask thee, Kassapa, the meaning of this thing : 
How comes it that thine altar lies deserted?" 

He answ ers : 

" "lis of such things as sights, and sounds, and tastes, 
Of women, and of lusts, the ritual speaks. 
When these I saw to be the dregs of life, 
I felt no charm in offerings small or great." 

Gotama rojoins : 

" But if thy mind no longer finds delight 
In sights and sounds, and things that please the 
taste, 

What is it, in the world of men or gods, 

That thy heart longs for \ Tell me that, Kassapa !" 

And the convert answers : 

"That state of Peace I saw, wherein the roots 
Of new existences are all destroyed ; and greed, 
And hatred, and delusion, all hare ceased, — - 
The state from lust of future life set free ; 
That changeth not, can ne'er be led to change. 
My mind saAV that ! What care I for those rites ?" 1 

It is this same longing for peace which is represented 

1 The first Khandhaka, chap. xxii. § 5. Compare Buddhist 
Birth Stories, pp. 114, 115. 



ICO 



gotaua's order. 



to have been the deciding motive which led Gotaina 
himself to abandon the world. The last authority 
quoted says of him also : 

" The Bodisat, riding in his splendid chariot, entered 
" the town with great magnificence and exceeding 
" glory. At that time a noble virgin, Kisii Gotami by 
•• name, had gone to the flat roof of the upper storey of 
" her palace, and she beheld the beauty and majesty 
" of the Bodisat as he Avas proceeding through the city. 
"Pleased and delighted at the sight, she burst forth 
•'into this song of joy: 

" Blessed indeed is that mother, — 
Blessed indeed is that father, — ■ 
Blessed indeed is that wife, — 
AVho owns this . Lord so glorious ! 

"Hearing this, the Bodisat thought to himself, 'On 
" 'catching sight of such a one the heart of his mother 
'"is made happy, the heart of his father is made 
" 'happy, the heart of his wife is made happy ! This 
" 1 is all she says. But by what can every heart attain 
" ' to lasting happiness and peace ?' And to him whose 
" mind was estranged from sin the answer came, 1 When 
11 'the fire of lust is gone out, then peace is gained; 
" 'when the fires of hatred and delusion are gone out, 
" 'then peace is gained; when the troubles of mind, 
" ' arising from pride, credulity, and all other sins, have 
" ' ceased, then peace is gained ! Sweet is the lesson 



gotama's order. 



161 



" c this singer makes me hear, for the Nirvana of Peace 
" ' is that which I have been trying to find out. This 
" 'very day I will break away from household cares ! 
" ' I will renounce the world ! I will follow only after 
'"the Nirvana itself!"' 1 

This immortal peace, this unchangeable state, to be 
reached here on this earth, this Nirvana of Arahatship, 
was looked upon by the early Buddhists as better than 
all else that the world could bestow. It is the highest 
happiness, the bliss that passeth not away, in which 
even death hath lost its sting and the grave its victory, 
and all the difficulties and trials of life, its gains and 
ills, its hopes and its despair, have passed away for 
ever in a perfect Eest. 

William Frederick Eobertson's words will help us 
to understand this position, when he says, without a 
thought of Buddhism, "The deepest want of man is 

1 Buddhist Birth Stories, pp. 79, 80. The force of this 
passage is due to the fulness of meaning which, to the Buddhist, 
the words Nibbuta and Nibbanarj convey. No words in Western 
languages cover exactly the same ground, or connote the same ideas. 
To explain them fully to any one unfamiliar with Indian modes of 
thought would be difficult anywhere, and impossible in a note ; but 
their nn aning is pretty clear from the above sentences. Where in 
them, in Ihe song, the words blessed, happy, peace, and the 
words gone out, ceased, occur, Nibbuta stands in the original in 
one or other of its two meanings ; where in them the words Nit- 
van t. S ii v Tina of Peace, occur, Nibbanarj stands in the original. 
Nirvana is a lasting state of happiness" and peace, to be reached 
hero "ii earth by the extinction of the "fires" and "troubles" men- 
tioned in this passage. 

M 



1G2 



gotama's order. 



'•'not a desire for happiness, but a cravkig for peace. 
"The real strength. 'and majesty of the soul of man is 
'•calmness, the manifestation of strength, the peace of 
" God ruling, the word of Christ saying to the inward 
"spirit, 'Peace,' and there is a great calm." And 
again : " Peace, then, is the opposite of passion ; and of 
"labour, toil and trouble .... that state in which 
" there arc no desires — in which there is no misery, no 
"remorse, no sting. And to this, says the Apostle, ye 
'•are called — the grand peculiar call of Christianity — ■ 
"the call, ' Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
" 'heavy laden, and I will give you — Pest.'" 

It was the distinguishing characteristic of Gotama, 
as the Buddha, that particular quality which made him 
to be a " very Buddha," that he had not only found this 
Pest "for himself, but that he called others to partake 
uf it ; that he had the power to lead others to under- 
stand it, desire it, realize it. And though the state 
is a mental state, independent of outward conditions, 
though Kirvana might be reached by those who had 
not abandoned the world, the Suttas of the early Bud- 
dhists are filled with the belief, doubtless shared, if not 
originated, by Gotama himself, that the attainment of 
it amidst the distractions of business or of family life 
was difficult in the extreme. 

A very suggestive writer, full of the most modern 
spirit, speaks quite seriously of that "calmness and 
"serenity of soul which is unattainable by those 



gotama's oedee. 



163 



" who still breathe the atmosphere of the domestic 
"hearth, and are liable to be swayed and perturbed by 
" the emotions inseparable from the love of the earthly, 
"the perishable, and the imperfect." 1 So we heard 
in the Tevijja Sutta the other, clay how, when he has 
listened to the words of the Buddha, the convert thinks : 
"Full of hindrances is household life, a path defiled 
" by passion : free as the air is the life of him who has . 
"renounced all worldly things. How difficult is it for 
"the man who dwells at home to live the higher life 
"in all its fulness, in all its purity, in all its bright 
"perfection !" 

And numberless other passages might be quoted 
from the Suttas in which the same idea is implied, 
though the opposition of the two conditions is not often 
so directly stated. 

Thus, when we read : " The life which brings about 
" gain is one thing, but another is the life that leads 
" to Nirvana. When the Bhikkhu, the disciple of the 
"Master, has perceived this, let him not take delight 
" in honour in the world, but let him seek rather after 
" separation from it:" 2 — we feel that the "separation 
"from it" means being so not only in mind, but also 
in actual life. 

And again : "A wise man should leave the doctrine 
" of da ss, and follow the doctrine of light. Going 

1 Greg, Enigmas of Life, p. 153. 
a Dliammapad an, verse 75. 

M 2 



1(54 



gotama's order. 



" forth from his home into tlic homeless state, let 
''him, in retirement, seek there for joy where joy 
"seems difficult. Leaving all pleasures behind, and 
"free from hindrances, let the wise man purify himself 
"from all evil states of mind." 1 

In these verses the condemnation is clear, not only 
of the state of a man "who is too much immersed in 
worldly cares, but also of the state of a man .who is at 
all exposed to their distracting influence. 

Ilerc is another such passage : 

" Let us live happily then, free from hatred among 
"the hating. Among men who hate, let us dwell 
"free from hatred ! 

" Let us live happily then, free from ailments among 
"the ailing. Among men who are sick at heart, let 
" us dwell free from affliction ! 

" Let us live happily then, free from care among the 
"careworn. Among men who are eager, let us dwell 
"free from eagerness! 

"Let us live happily then, as those who have no 
" hindrances ! We shall be like the bright gods who 
" feed on happiness ! 2 

Surely all this is really an outburst in praise of the 
state of those who had left the world, and had no 
cares and no hindrances because they had entered the 



1 Dliammapadarj, verses 87, 88. 

2 Ibid, verses 197—200. 



gotama's obdeb. 



165 



Society of Gotama's disciples. So it is clearly of life 
in the Order that the beautiful lines are spoken : 

" When the wise man by earnestness has driven 
Vanity far away, the terraced heights 
Of wisdom doth he climb, and, free from care, 
Looks clown on the vain world,, the careworn 
crowd — 

As he who stands upon a mountain-top 
Looks down, serene, on toilers in the plains." 

It is possible, no doubt, to object that it is the inward 
state which is here referred to, and that we have 
nothing more than the feeling expressed at greater 
length in the well-known lines of Lucretius, where he 
says : 

"It may be sweet when on the great sea the winds 
"trouble its waters to behold from land another's deep 
"distress; not that it is a pleasure and delight that 
" any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see 
" from what evils you are yourself exempt. It may be 
" sweet also to look upon the mighty struggles of war 
"arrayed along the plains without sharing yourself in 
" the danger. But nothing is more sweet than to hold 
"the lofty and serene positions, well fortified by the 
"learning of the wise, from which you may look down 
" upon others, and see them wandering all abroad, and 
" going astray in their search for the path of life ; see 
"the contest among them of intellect, of rivalry, oi 



k;i; 



GOTama's order. 



"birth, the striving night and day with surpassing 
"effort to struggle up to the summit of power, and be 
"masters of the world. miserable minds of men ! 
"0 blinded breasts! in what darkness of life and in 
"how great dangers is passed all this term of life, 
"whatever its duration! Why will you not see that 
"nature craves for itself nothing more than that the 
" man from whose body pain holds aloof, should in 
"mind enjoy a feeling of pleasure, exempt from care 
"and fear?" 1 

This analogy Avas already pointed out by Mr. 
Childcrs, in whom we lost not only a scholar of quite 
unusual promise, but also one whose real sympathy 
with the deeper side of early Buddhism enabled him 
to throw an unexpected light on many dark and diffi- 
cult passages in their sacred writings. But he would 
have been the first to maintain that the allusion of the 
Buddhist lines is not only to Nirvana, but also to life 
in the Order. Headers of Thomas a Kcmpis will find 
it by no means difficult to understand the tone of mind 
which, fully recognizing the possibility of goodness to 
those who live in the world, still looks upon the state 
of those who have left it as the proper and natural aim 
of those who are earnestly bent upon the attainment of 
the highest forms of the religious life. 

It is the constant repetition of the allusion to such 



1 Lucretius, Book ii. ad. init. "Suave mari maguo," &c. I 
follow ilr. Munro's version. 



gotama's oedee. 



167 



a view of life in similar passages, which leads us to 
the undoubting conclusion that a spirit of renunciation 
of the world really filled the minds both of Gotama 
himself and of his first disciples, and even to the sus- 
picion that this feeling was very prevalent in early 
Buddhist times, and prepared the hearts of those who 
listened to early Buddhist teaching. The idea was in 
the air ; men were already favourably inclined towards 
it ; and the new movement contributed to it the ener- 
getic motive force of a strong emotion, and the guiding 
influence in the direction it should take. 

1 am quite aware that a cold criticism can point to 
clear and painful evidence of mental weakness, of per- 
sonal rivalries, even of moral failings, in some of the 
early disciples ; and it may ask how it was possible for 
such men to be moved by the kind of feelings suggested 
in the passages I have just quoted. I have the greatest 
respect for such criticism when it is dealing with points 
of literary history or of philological investigation. But 
it is much more likely to err on the negative than on 
the positive side when it attempts to pass judgment on 
the emotional, even fickle, movements of masses of men. 

We have a curious instance of this in the case of one 
of the greatest scholars England has produced. When, 
at the first rise of monasticism in the basin of the Medi- 
terranean, an enthusiasm for the solitary life, not unlike 
that which was prevalent in the times we are discussing 
in the valley of the Ganges, led men of all ranks and 



ICS 



gotama's order. 



classes, and in incredible numbers, to devote themselves 
to a religious life in retirement from the haunts of men, 
this is the kind of explanation which Gibbon, paraphras- 
ing the verses of a pagan litterateur, is pleased to give : 

" The whole island is filled, or rather defiled, by men 
" who fly from the light. They call themselves monks, 
"or solitaries, because they choose to live alone, with- 
"out any witnesses of their actions. They fear the 
"gifts of fortune, from the apprehension of losing 
•• them; and lest they should be miserable, they embrace 
" a life of voluntary wretchedness. How absurd is 
'•their choice! how perverse their understanding! to 
"dread the evils, without being able to support the 
" blessings of the human condition ! Either this melan- 
"cholv madness is the effect of disease, or else the 
" consciousness of guilt urges these unhappy men to 
"•exercise on then own bodies the tortures which are 
" inflicted on fugitive slaves by the hands of Justice." 1 

One is tempted to say, "How absurd is this judg- 
" ment ! how perverse the understanding which can 
"see no motives but these in conduct so opposed to 
"the spirit of Vanity Fair!" The perhaps too elo- 
quent pages of Montalembert tell a different tale ; but 
there are witnesses enough among the Christian ere- 
mites themselves to show how inadequate and one-sided 
is such an estimate. Hear what Jerome says, himself 

1 Gibbon, c. 29 (eil. Eohn, iii. 328, 329). He is paraphrasing 
Claudii Eutilii Dc Reditu Suo, i. 439—448. 



gotama's order. 



169 



one of them, when he invites his fellow-christians to 
join their ranks : 

"0 desert, blooming with the flowers of Christ! 
" solitude, in which are fonnd those stones of which 
" the city of the great King is built in the Apocalypse ! 
" loneliness, delighting in intercourse in God ! What 
"do you, Brother, in secular life, who art greater 
"than the world? How long shall the shadows of 
"roofs oppress you? How long shall the prison-house 
"of smoky cities enclose you? Believe me, I know 
"not how much more light I gaze upon. It is well, 
"having east off the burden of the body, to fly off to 
"the pure effulgence of the sky. 

" Do you fear poverty ? Christ calls the poor blessed. 
" Do you dread labour ? ~No athlete is crowned without 
"sweat. Do you think of diet? Faith fears not 
"hunger. Do you fear to lay your body, wasted with 
"fasting, on the naked ground? The Lord will lie, 
"down with you. Do you shrink from the undressed 
"hair of a neglected head? Your head is Christ. 
"Are you fearful of the boundless extent of the soli- 
tude? You mentally walk in paradise. As often 
"as you ascend thither in contemplation, you will not 
"be in solitude." 1 

The critic may think such thoughts absurd, and the 
understanding that accepts them only perverse; but 



Jerome, Ep. ad Heliodorum (Op. cd. Erasm. i. f. 2). 



170 



gotama's okder. 



we may venture to sympathize a little with them, so 
far, at least, as to enable us to follow the history of 
those strange men who thought them. It seems to me, 
I confess, that such as this was the tone, the spirit, 
thai gave life to the monastic side of the early Buddhist 
movement, and that in this respect we must accept the 
evidence of the early Buddhist recluses themselves. 



And I would go even further still. The passion 
for renunciation among the early Buddhists did not 
stand alone. It came comparatively earlier with them 
than it came in the history of the Christian Church, 
and it was strengthened and supported by other feel- 
ings, more like those which animated the very first 
disciples in New -Testament times. The history of 
Buddhism, when the Pali Pitakas were being formed, 
shows us the rise of monasticism coincident and com- 
bined with the glow of faith that distinguishes the rise 
of a new religion. 

Chief among these is the strong attractive power of 
the personal character of the founder of the religion. 
"When the Buddhist Society was being formed, Gotama 
was still living among them, and in daily contact with 
them, as their guide and master and example ; and 
their love to him has tinged the Buddhist writings 
with a tone of personal affection and reverence that is 



gotama's oedee. 



171 



occasionally very striking, and must have been a 
powerful factor in the young Society. 

Thus we are told at the end of the Sutta Nipata 
of an aged Brahman going to Grotama with the plain- 
tive appeal, "lam old, feeble, colourless! My eyes 
" are not clear, my hearing is not good ! Lest I should 
"perish a fool on the way, tell me the Dhamma, that 
"I may know how here in this world to escape decay 
"and birth!" 

Gotama sets forth the answer, in accordance with 
the doctrine of Arahatship, that he must give up long- 
ing for existence in any form, and must get rid of that 
craving thirst which would lead to such existence being 
reneAvcd. The aged Brahman is convinced, the eyes of 
his mind arc opened ; he who was on the brink of death 
feels himself saved just at the time when hope was 
almost at an end. Bavari, an old friend and fellow- 
Biahman, then apparently asks him what has wrought 
the great change in him, for he is represented as re- 
plying to Bavari : 

" I will proclaim accordingly the way to the further 
" shore" — so said the A r enerable Pingiya. " As he saw 
"it, so he told it — he, the very wise, the passionless, 
"the desireless Lord. For why should he speak 
" falsely ?" 

But this reference to the teacher turns off the old 
man's thoughts even from the teaching, and he changes 
the subject of his speech: 



172 



GOTAMA 6 ORDER. 



" Well ! I will praise that beautiful voice ; the voice 
" of Him who is without staiu and folly ; who has left 
" arrogance and self-righteousness far behind ! 

"The darkness-dispelling Buddha, the all-seeing, 
" who understands all conditions, who has overcome all 
"existences, who is free from the passions, and has 
v> put an end to pain — rightly is he called the Buddha 
" — he, Brahmana, hath come nigh even to me. 

"And so, as a bird would pass the dense jungle by, 
'•and take up his abode in the fruitful forest, even so 
"I, leaving the men of narrow views, am like a swan 
" who has gained the broad waters. 

" Those who before explained to me the teaching of 
"Gotama, saying, 'Thus was it, thus it shall be,' all 
c< (hat was only at secondhand, all that but added to 
" my doubts. 

" There is only one living who can dispel the dark- 
" ness. That is the high-born, the luminous ; Gotama 
" of great understanding, Gotama of great wisdom, who 
" taught me the truth, the instantaneous, immediate 
" destroyer of thirst, deliverance from distress — the 
" like whereof is nowhere !" 

Then says Bavari to him, " Canst thou then stay 
"away from him even for a moment, Pingiya?" 

And the old man rejoins : 

" Xot even for a moment do I stay away from him, 
" Brahmana. I see him in my mind and with my 
"eye, vigilant, Brahmana, night and day. In 



gotama's oedee. 



"reverencing Mm do I spend the night; therefore, 
"methinks, I am not far from him. 

"Belief and joy, mind and thought, incline me 
"towards the doctrine of Gotama. Whichsoever way 
"the very wise man goes, that self-same way my 
"heart, too, turns. 

" I am worn out, and old, and feeble. "lis true, 
"therefore, my body cannot go. But in my thoughts 
"I always go there; for my heart, Brahmana, is 
"joined to him !" 

And as Pingiya sat there, picturing to his friend his 
reverence for Gotama, and telling how he was not far 
from him, there shone round about them a golden light, 
and lo ! a vision, sent forth by the Buddha himself, 
appeared before them. And Pingiya saw once more, 
and with his bodily eyes, the Blessed One standing, as 
it were, before him, and saying : 

"As the faith of Yakkhali became set free from 
" doubt, and the faith of Bhadravudha grew clear, and 
"of Gotama of Alavi, even so shalt thou, too, make 
"clear thy faith; thou shalt roach, Pingiya, the 
"further shore (the haven that is outside) of the realm 
" of death." 

It was perhaps only a perverse intelligence that 
could so exaggerate the insight and the wisdom of 
Gotama ; it may be absurd to say that a vision of the 
Buddha could thus really and outwardly have appeared; 
the whole story may be a legend. But it must have 



174 



gotama's order. 



been the hand of love that has penned a legend 
so touching and so beautiful, and which affords evi- 
dence — equally strong, "whether it be poetic fancy, or 
a relation of what the writer thought to be actual 
fact — of the mighty influence of Gotama's personal 
character. 



TIow the Great Teacher used that influence as regards 
the Society is set forth at the beginning of the Book 
<>i' the ( J rcat I )ccoase. It is there recorded that Gotama 
said to the assembled brethren : 

" 'I will teach you, O mendicants, seven conditions 
" ' of the welfare of the Society. Listen well and 
" 'attend, and I will speak.' 

" 'Even so, Lord,' said the brethren in assent to the 
" Blessed One ; and he spake as follows : 

" ' So long, mendicants, as the brethren meet 
" ' together in full and frequent assemblies^ — so long 
" ' as they meet together in concord, and rise in con- 
" ' cord, and carry out in concord the duties of the 
" ' order — so long as the brethren shall establish no- 
"' thing that has not been already prescribed, and 
" 'abrogate nothing that has been already established, 
" ' and act in accordance with the rules of the order as 
" ' now laid down — so long as the brethren honour and 
" ( esteem and revere and support the elders of expe- 
" ' rience and long standing, the fathers and leaders of 



i 



gotama's order* 



175 



" ( the order, and hold it a point of duty to hearken to 
" ' their words — so long as the brethren fall not under 
"'the influence of that craving which, springing up 
" ' within them, would give rise to renewed existence 
" ' — so long as the brethren delight in a life of soli- 
" 'tude — so long as the brethren so train their minds 
"'that good and holy men shall come to them, and 
"' those who have come shall dwell at ease — so long 
" ' may the brethren be expected, not to decline, but 
" ' to prosper. So long as these seven conditions shall 
" ' continue to exist among the brethren, so long as 
" ' they arc well instructed in these conditions, so long 
" ' may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to 
" 'prosper. 

" ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach 
" ' you, brethren. Listen well and attend, and I 
" ' will speak.' 

"And on their expressing their assent, he spake as 
" follows : 

" ' So long as the brethren shall not engage in, or 
" 'be fond of, or be connected with business — so long 
'"as the brethren shall not be in the habit of, or be 
" ' fond of, or be partakers in idle talk — so long as the 
"'brethren shall not be addicted to, or be fond of, 
" 1 or indulge in slothfulness — so long as the brethren 
" ' shall not frequent, or. be fond of, or indulge in 
" ' society — so long as the brethren shall neither have, 
" ' nor fall under the influence of, sinful desires — so 



17G 



GOTAMA'S OKDER. 



" 'long as the brethren shall not become the friends, 
" 'companions, or intimates of sinners — so long as the 
" 'brethren shall not come to a stop on their way [to 
" 'Nirvana 1 ] because they have attained to any lesser 
'''thing — so long may the brethren be expected not 
" 'to decline, but to prosper. 

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist 
" 'among the brethren, so long as they are instructed 
"'in these conditions, so long may the brethren be 
• • ' expected not to decline, but to prosper. 

" ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach 
" ' you, brethren. Listen well and attend, and I 
" ' will speak.' 

" And on their expressing their assent, he spake as 
' ' follows : 

"'So long as the brethren shall be full of faith, 
" : modest in heart, afraid of sin, full of learning, 
" ' strong in energy, active in mind, and full of wisdom, 
" ' so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, 
" ' but to prosper. 

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist 
" ' among the brethren, so long as they are instructed 
"'in these conditions, so long may the brethren be 
" ' expected not to decline, but to prosper.' 

1 This is an interesting analogue to Philippians iii. 13 : "I count 
not myself to have apprehended : but this one thing I do, forgetting 
those things 'which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things 
which are before, I press toward the mark." .... 



GOTAMA'S OEDER. 



177 



" ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach 
" ' you, brethren. Listen well and attend, and I 
" 'will speak.' 

"And on their expressing their assent, he spake as 
" follows : 

" ' So long as the brethren shall exercise themselves 
"'in the seven -fold higher wisdom, that is to say, in 
"'mental activity, search after truth, energy, joy, 
"'peace, earnest contemplation, and equanimity of 
" ' mind, so long may the brethren be expected not to 
" ' decline, but to prosper. 

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist 
"'among the brethren, so long as they are instructed 
"'in these conditions, so long may the brethren be 
" 'expected not to decline, but to prospsr. 

" ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach 
" 'you, brethren. Listen well and attend, and I 
" 'will speak.' 

"And on their expressing their assent, he spake as 
"follows : 

" ' So long as the brethren shall exercise themselves 
" ' in the seven-fold perception due to earnest thought, 
"'that is to say, the perception of impermanency, of 
" ' non-individuality, of corruption, of the danger of 
" ' sin, of sanctification, of purity of heart, of Nirvana, 
" 'so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, 
" 'but to prosper. 

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist 

N 



178 



gotama's order. 



" 'among the brethren, so long as they are instructed 
" ' in these conditions, so long may the brethren bo 
" ' expected not to decline, but to prosper. 

" ' Six conditions of welfare will I teach yon, 
" 'brethren. Listen well and attend, and I will speak.' 

"And on their expressing their assent, he spake as 
"follows : 

" ' So long as the brethren shall persevere in kind- 
"'ness of action, speech and thought, amongst the 
"'saints, both in public and in private — so long as 
"'they shall divide without partiality, and share in 
"'common with the upright and the holy, all such 
" 'things as they receive in accordance with the just 
" 'provisions of the order, down even to the mere con- 
" ' tents of a begging bowl — so long as the brethren 
" 'shall live among the saints in the practice, both in 
"'public and in private, of those virtues which (un- 
" 'broken, intact, unspotted, unblemished) are produc- 
"'tive of freedom 1 and praised by the wise; which 
" 'arc untarnished by the desire of future life, or by 
"'the belief in the efficacy of outward acts; 2 and 

1 Buddhaghosa takes this in a spiritual sense : "These virtues 
"are bhujissani because they bring one to the state of a free man 
"by delivering him from the slavery of craving." 

2 The commentator says : "These virtues are called aparamat- 
"thani because they are untarnished by craving or delusion, and 
" because no one can say of him who practises them, ' You have 
"'been already guilty of such and such a sin.'" Craving is here 
the hope of a future life in heaven, and delusion the belief in the 



gotama's order. 



179 



" < which are conducive to high and holy thoughts — so 
"'long as the brethren shall live among the saints, 
" ' cherishing, both in public and in private, that noble 
"'and saving faith which leads to the complete de- 
" ' str action of the sorrow of him who acts according 
" 'to it — so long may the brethren be expected not to 
" ' decline, but to prosper. 

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist 
" 'among the brethren, so long as they are instructed 
"'in these conditions, so long may the brethren be 
" 1 expected not to decline, but to prosper.' 

"And whilst the Blessed One stayed there at Baga- 
" gaha on the Vulture's Peak, he held that comprehen- 
" sive religious talk with the brethren on the nature of 
"upright conduct, and of earnest contemplation, and 
"of intelligence: ' Great is the fruit, great the advan- 
" ' tage of earnest contemplation when set round with 
" ' upright conduct. Great is the fruit, great the advan- 
" ' tage of intellect when set round with earnest con- 
" ' templation. The mind set round with intelligence 
"'is freed- from the great evils, that is to say, from 
" ' sensuality, from individuality, from delusion, and 
" 'from ignorance.'" 

This last paragraph is spoken of as if it were a well- 
known summary, and it is constantly repeated after- 
wards in the same Sutta. The word I have rendered 



efficacy of rites and ceremonies (the two nissayas), which arj con- 
demned as unworthy inducements to virtue. 

. N 2 



ISO 



gotama's order. 



"earnest contemplation" is samadhi, which occupies 
in the Pali Pitakas very much the same position as faith 
docs in the New Testament ; and this section shows 
that the relative importance of samadhi patina and 
slla played a part in early Buddhism just as the dis- 
tinction between faith, reason and works, did after- 
wards in Western theology. It would be difficult to 
find a passage in which the Buddhist view of the 
relation of these conflicting ideas is stated with greater 
beauty of thought, or equal succintness of form. 

What would happen to the Society after Gotama's 
death, formed the subject of a conversation recorded 
in the same book as having taken place a few days 
before his death between him and Ananda, his beloved 
disciple and constant personal attendant, the St. John, 
as Moggallama is the St. Peter, and Sariputta the St. 
Paul, of the Buddhist narratives. 

" Now when the Blessed One had thus entered upon 
" the rainy season, there fell upon him a dire sickness, 
"and sharp pains came upon him, even unto death. 
"But the Blessed One, mindful and self-possessed, 
"bore them without complaint. 

" Then this thought occurred to the Blessed One : 
" ' It would not be right for rne to pass away from 
"' existence without addressing the disciples, without 
" ' taking leave of the order. Let me now, by a strong 
"'effort of the will, bend this sickness down again, 
" 'and keep my hold on life till the allotted time be 



gotama's order. 



18L 



" And the Blessed One, by a strong effort of the will, 
"bent that sickness down again, and kept his hold on 
"life till the time he fixed upon should come. And 
"the sickness abated upon him. 

"Now very soon after, the Blessed One began to 
"recover; when he had quite got rid of the sickness, 
" he went out from the monastery, and sat clown behind 
"the monastery on a seat spread out there. And the 
" venerable Ananda went to the place where the Blessed 
"One was, and saluted him, and took a seat respect- 
" fully on one side, and addressed the Blessed One, and 
" said : ' I have beheld, Lord, how the Blessed One was 
" 'in health, and I have beheld how the Blessed One 
" ' had to suffer. And though at the sight of the siek- 
" 'ness of the Blessed One my body became weak as a 
" 'creeper, and the horizon became dim to me, and my 
" 'faculties were no longer clear, yet notwithstanding 
"'I took some little comfort from the thought that 
" ' the Blessed One Avould not pass away from existence 
"'until at least he had left instructions as touching 
" ' the order.' 

"'What, then, Ananda? Does the order expect 
" ' that of me ? I have preached the truth without 
" ' making any distinction between exoteric and esote- 
" 'rie doctrine: for in respect of the truths, Ananda, 
e Tathagata has no such thing as the closed fist 
" ' of a teacher, who keeps some things back. Surely, 
" 'Ananda, should there be any one who harbours the 



182 



gotama's order. 



" ' thought, ' It is I who will lead the brotherhood,' 
" 1 or, ' The order is dependent upon me,' it is he who 
" 'should lay down instructions in any matter concern- 
" ' ing the order. Now the Tathagata, Ananda, thinks 
k " 'not that it is he who should lead the brotherhood, 
" ' or that the order is dependent upon him. Why then 
" ' should he leave instructions in any matter concern- 
u< ing the order? I too, Ananda, ant now grown 
l> 'old and full of years, my journey is drawing to its 
" ' close, I have reached my sum of days, I am turning 
"'eighty years of age; and just as a worn-out cart, 
"'Ananda, can only with much additional care be 
" ' made to move along, so, methinks, the body of the 
" 'Tathagata can only be kept going with much addi- 
" ' tional care. It is only, Ananda, when the Tathagata, 
" 'ceasing to attend to any outward thing, or to expe- 
"'rience any sensation, becomes plunged in that 
" ' devout meditation of heart which is concerned with 
" 'no material object — it is only then that the body of 
" ' the Tathagata is at ease. 

"'Therefore, Ananda, be ye lamps unto your- 
" ' selves. i3e ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake 
" 'yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the 
" ' truth as a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. 
" ' Look not for refuge to any one besides yourselves. 
" ' And how, Ananda, is a brother to be a lamp unto 
" 'himself, a refuge to himself, betaking himself to no 
" ' external refuge, holding fast to the truth as a lamp. 



gotama's oeder. 



183 



" { holding fast as a refuge to the truth,, looking not 
" 'for refuge to any one besides himself? 

" ' Herein, Ananda, let a brother, as he dwells 
"'in the body, so regard the body that he, being 
"' strenuous, thoughtful and mindful, may, whilst in 
"'the world, overcome the grief which arises from 
" ' bodily craving — while subject to sensations, let him 
" 'continue so to regard the sensations that he, being 
" ' strenuous, thoughtful and mindful, may, whilst in 
" 'the world, overcome the grief which arises from the 
"'sensations — and so, also, as he thinks, or reasons, 
" ' or feels, let him overcome the grief which arises 
"'from the craving due to ideas, or to reasoning, or 
" ' to feeling. 

"'And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I 
"'am dead, shall be a lamp unto themselves, and a 
"'refuge unto themselves, shall betake themselves to 
" ' no external refuge, but holding fast to the truth as 
" 'their lamp, and holding fast as their refuge to the 
" 'truth, shall look not for refuge to any one besides 
" ' themselves — it is they, Ananda, among the Bhik- 
" 'khus (the members of my Society) whc shall reach 
" ' the very topmost height 1 — but they must be willing 
'"to learn.'" 



1 That is, Nirvana, Arahatship. 



184 



gotama's order. 



One might go on quoting such passages ; hut our 
time is limited. I have had only an hour in which, to 
say something of the great Order, the history of which 
stretches, for more than two thousand years, over the 
history of many peoples, compared with whose num- 
bers those of England sink away into insignificance. 
Having to choose what I should omit, I have tried to 
deal rather with the kernel than the husk, rather with 
the heart of the matter than its form, rather with the 
hopes and feelings and affections that gave rise to the 
Society, and have been its life-blood and its protection 
throughout its long career, than with the outward 
phenomena of dress and residence and food, or even of 
ecclesiastical history, of missions, of church councils, 
and of the patronage of kings. And I have been the 
more inclined to do this, since the line of thought pur- 
sued in this Lecture has not, so far as I know, been 
treated of elsewhere, and since there is not the slightest 
danger of any European ever entering the Buddhist 
Order. We shall be quite ready, on the contrary, with 
a short and sharp judgment on the folly and useless- 
ness of abandoning the world. 

At the same time I would venture, in conclusion, to 
hazard the remark, that it may be open to doubt whe- 
ther the view of life which led the early Buddhists to 
do so was further off in one direction from the true one, 
than the complicated competitions, the unworthy social 



gotama's order. 



185 



struggles, the eager, craving restlessness, of this Baby- 
lon of ours is on the other. And of one thing I 
am quite sure, that Europeans in Buddhist countries 
are often misled by ignorance to jump to harsh con- 
clusions from the outward appearances of Buddhism. 
A European sees a strange-looking native, dressed in 
curious robes, and almost uncanny-looking from the 
effect of a closely shaven head, walking slowly along 
with a fan in his hand. If he follows him to his 
home under the palm-trees, he will admire the pic- 
turesque appearance of the cleanly-swept ground, the 
flowering shrubs, the quivering silver leaves of the 
Bo-tree, and the graceful shape of the little Buddhist 
tope that adorns the enclosure. At the further end 
there will be the monk's abode, and perhaps a dark 
chamber containing one or more painted images of the 
Buddha, before which are stone slabs on which the 
villagers place flowers from the shrubs outside. The 
walls and ceilings may be painted in gorgeous colours, 
not arranged according to modem taste ; and the visitor 
may chance to see a worshipper muttering some unin- 
telligible words before the image. These the on-looker 
naturally takes to be a prayer to the idol ; and he goes 
away perhaps with a feeling of contempt for the uncouth 
and lazy priest, and with a comfortable sense of how 
much superior a white man is to those brown and 
hatlcss idolaters, and how much better than theirs are 
his own ideas and his own education. 



1SG gotama's order. 

Now there is a great deal to be said for the truth of 
his opinion. But it is not the whole truth. The par- 
ticular brother of the Buddhist Order of Ecclnscs whom 
he has met may be indolent, or ignorant, or self-righ- 
teous. There arc such men to be found in the ranks 
of the clergy of all religions. But he may be very 
much the reverse. There is reason to believe that the 
ancient spirit of the Order is by no means extinct in 
China and Japan, or even in Tibet. And I know from 
personal experience that it survives in Ceylon. 

Go and talk to the yellow-robed and tonsured recluse; 
—not, of course, through an interpreter, or out of ;i 
book of phrases ; you must know not only his language, 
but something of Buddhist ideas ; and you must speak 
with him as man to man, not as the wise to the barba- 
rian. You will certainly be courteous ; for whatever 
else a Buddhist Bhikkhu may be, he will be sure to 
give proof of courtesy, and to maintain a dignified 
demeanour. And it will be strange if you do not find 
a new world of thought and of feeling opening out 
before you. 

I once knew such a man. He would have seemed 
nothing to a passing observer but a thin and diseased- 
looking monk, rather mean in stature. When he first 
came to me, the hand of death was already upon him. 
He was sinking into the grave from the effects of a 
painful and incurable malady. I had heard of his 
learning as a Pali scholar, and of his illness, and was 



gotama's oedee. 



187 



grateful to him for leaving his home, under such cir- 
cumstances, to teach a stranger. There was a strange 
light in his sunken eyes, and he was constantly turning 
away from questions of Pali to questions of Buddhism. 
I found him versed in all the poetry and ethics of the 
Suttas, and was glad to hear Mm talk. There was an 
indescribable attraction about him, a simplicity, a high- 
mindeclness, that filled me with reverence. I used 
sometimes to think that the personal impression of 
Yatramnlle TJnnanse might have led me to colour my 
judgment of him too highly; hut Mr. Guilders told 
me, after my return to England, that the dying Bud- 
dhist scholar had made a similar impression upon him. 
We are not likely to have been both mistaken. And 
throughout the long history of Gotama's Order, its 
influence over those who had eyes to see, and ears to 
hear, must have been moulded and guided by many 
such men as Y'atramulle TJnnanse, or it would not have 
been the power that it has been. Whatever we may 
think of the folly of abandoning the world, let us at 
least be sure of this, that the teachings of the Buddhist 
Suttas have not been recorded, the Buddhist Order was 
not founded, altogether in vain. 



LECTURE VL 
LATER FORMS OF BUDDIIISM. 



Wse have now como, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the 
end of our journey, and I am afraid you will feel how 
little has been accomplished. 1 have been able only 
to touch the fringe of a great subject, to dwell only 
upon a few phases of it which are of more especial 
interest from the point of view imposed upon me by 
the comparative aim of all these Lectures. What has 
been left unsaid is a hundred times more in extent, 
and in many directions more interesting perhaps, and 
more important, than what has been said. But you, 
who have listened with so kind an attention to my 
imperfect endeavours, will appreciate, I trust, the dif- 
ficulties of my task. I suppose there are about fifty 
thousand discourses and lectures delivered every week 
in England alone on Christianity. Who shall count 
the hours that have been devoted during the past 1800 
years, in many a University, to the public discussion 
of what Christianity is, what it means, what it should 



LATER FOEMS OF BUDDHISM. 



189 



teacli us ? The professors have spoken with, a kind of 
authority on their subject to which a liibbert Lecturer 
can lay no claim on his. Have they finished yet ? Is 
the question solved ? Are we all quite agreed as to 
the origin, the growth, the history of Christianity ? 
The wisest Doctor in Divinity would find it difficult 
to give in six hours even a summary of our disputes. 
How much, then, of Christianity could he explain, and 
from the comparative standpoint, in that time, to Bud- 
dhists, however cultured, however ready to hear ? 

And the problem of Buddhism is no less difficult, 
no less immense. The Buddhism of Nepal and Tibet 
differs from the Buddhism of Ceylon as much as the 
Christianity of Eome or of Moscow differs from that of 
Scotland or Wales. The Buddhism of Mongolia and 
China is far removed from either of these, and the 
Buddhism of Japan has peculiarities all its own. The 
history of Buddhism, therefore, in each of the countries 
where it was adopted requires separate treatment. It 
is incorrect to speak, as is so often done, of Northern 
and Southern Buddhism as the only two great divisions 
into which Buddhism had been divided. There was a 
unity in Southern Buddhism; but there has been no 
such unity in Northern Buddhism. We may talk, 
indeed, of Northern Buddhisms ; but it would be better 
to keep the Buddhism of each of the northern countries 
in which it has been adopted separate and distinct, 
both in our thoughts and in our language. 



11)0 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



And even in each country where it has hcen received, 
Buddhism, though it lias acquired a distinctive colour- 
ing from its new surrounding", lias by no means re- 
mained permanently the same. The Catholic Church of 
Christianity is wont to boast that it has never changed. 
But from century to century the men who form the 
Church have lived under tho influence of changing cir- 
cumstanceSj of varying ideas, which have made; them 
believe differently from those who lived before them. 
They may repeat the same form of words, they may 
hold to the same form of creed, but they repeat the 
words in a sense not quite the same, they hold the 
cried so as to lay stress in different proportions on its 
various parts. So Buddhism also claims never to have 
changed. The Buddhist Order has adhered, in orthodox 
countries, to the same Vinaya, has declared its faith in 
the same Suttas, from the time when the Pitakas reached 
their present form, more than two thousand years ago, 
down to to-day. And even in the countries where 
the Pali Pitakas are forgotten, the Buddhists claim to 
follow the authority of the unchanging words of the 
Buddha himself; and they would say, in the words of 
the lines quoted by the Jataka Book from the Buddha 
Vaysa : x 

"As a clod, cast up in the air, doth surely fall to 
the ground, 



1 Buddhist Birth Stories, p. IS. 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



191 



" So surely endureth the word of the glorious Bud- 

dhas for ever. 
"As the death of all things that have life is certain 

and sure, • 

" So surely endureth the word of the glorious Bud- 

clhas for ever. 
" As, when night to its end hath come, the sun 

shall certainly rise, 
" So surely endureth the word of the glorious Bud- 

dhas for ever. 
" As the roar of the lion is sure when in morn he 

hath left his lair, 
" So surely endureth the word of the glorious Bud- 

dhas for ever:" 

It is a vain boast. The word of the Buddhas may 
endure, but the minds of men are ever changing. The 
history of Buddhism from its commencement to its 
close is an epitome of the religious history of mankind. 
And we have not solved the problem of Buddhism 
when we have understood the faith of the early Bud- 
dhists. 

It is in this respect that the study of later Buddhism 
in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, in Nepal and in Tibet, 
in China, Mongolia and Japan, is only second- in im- 
portance to the study of early Buddhism. And we 
owe a debt of gratitude to those who have attempted 
to set forth the fate of Buddhism in all these countries, 



192 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



to Spcncc Hardy, Bishop Bigandet, and Alabaster, to 
Rajendra Lai Mitra, Korosi, Koppen and Foucaux, 
to the brothers Schlagintwcit and the fathers Hue and 
Gabct, to Schicfncr and Wassilicf, to Dr. Eitcl, Dr. 
Edkins and to Mr. Beal. The history of the later 
fortunes of the Buddhist faith ; the differing forms 
which it has assumed in different minds ; the modifi- 
cations it lias undergone in various countries under the 
influence of ideas foreign, even antagonistic, to itself ; 
tlie way in which its fundamental doctrines have been 
overshadowed and destroyed by the persistent notions 
of Animism, by the growth of erroneous views as to 
the Buddha and the Buddhas, by the exaggerated 
importance attached to its mysticism, to its negative 
teaching, — all this will be of the greatest value in 
aiding us to understand the progress of religious ideas 
among mankind, and more especially in illustrating the 
causes that have been at work in a similar way on the 
shores of the Mediterranean. 

When we remember how fundamentally opposed are 
the views of life set forth in the Pali Pitakas to those 
set forth in the New Testament, and how different are 
the characters, the ideas, the habits and customs, of 
some of the peoples among whom the two religions 
have be^n adopted, we can then perceive how instruc- 
tive is the fact — one of the most curious facts in the 
whole history of the world — that Buddhism and Chris- 
tianity have both developed, in the course of fifteen 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



193 



hundred years, into sacerdotal and sacramental systems, 
each with its bells and rosaries and images and holy 
water ; each with its services in dead languages, with 
choirs and processions and. creeds and incense, in which 
the laity are spectators only ; each with its mystic rifjes 
and ceremonies performed by shaven priests in gor- 
geous robes ; each with its abbots and monks and nuns, 
of many grades ; each with its worship of virgins, saints 
and angels ; its reverence to the Virgin and the Child ; 
its confessions, fasts and purgatory; its idols, relics, 
symbols and sacred pictures ; its shrines and pilgrim- 
ages; each with its huge monasteries and gorgeous 
cathedrals; its powerful hierarchy and its wealthy 
cardinals ; each, even, ruled over by a Pope, with "a 
triple tiara on his head and the sceptre of temporal 
power in his hand, the representative on earth of an 
eternal Spirit in the heavens ! 

If all this be chance, it is a most stupendous miracle 
of coincidence; it is, in fact, ten thousand miracles. 
And it cannot be objected that the resemblance is in 
externals only. The principles which bind each of 
these two organizations together, which give them 
their recuperative vital power, are also similar. Each 
of the two Churches claims to be guided by the eternal 
Spirit, who is especially present in the infallible Head 
of the Church; each lays peculiar stress upon the 
mystic sacrament in which the priest reverently swal- 
lows a material thing, and by so doing believes himself 

o 



191 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



to become partaker in some mysterious way of a part 
of the Divine Being, who, during the ceremony, has 
become incorporated therein. And the most real 
resemblance lies deeper still, — in the similarity of the 
conditions under which the similar developcmcnts took 
place. Each had its origin at a time when the new 
faith was adopted by the invading hordes of barbarian 
men bursting in upon an older, a more advanced civi- 
lization — when men in bod\ r , but children in intellect, 
quick to feel emotion, and impregnated with Ani- 
mistic fallacies, became at once the conquerors and the 
pupils of men who had passed through a long training 
in religious feeling and in philosophical reasoning. 
Then do we find that strange mixture of speculative 
acutcness and emotional ignorance ; of earnest devotion 
to edification, and the blindest confidence in erroneous 
methods ; of a real philanthropy, and a priestly love 
of power ; of unhesitating self-sacrifice, and the most 
selfish struggles for personal pre-eminence, which cha- 
racterize the early centuries of Roman Catholicism and 
of Tibetan Lamaism alike. 

Those who prefer to adhere to the New Testament 
in the one case, or the Pali Suttas in the other, are 
sometimes apt to look only at the worse side of all this, 
and to regard, therefore, the whole movement of Roman 
Catholicism, or of Tibetan Lamaism, with aversion and 
contempt. But it is no slight merit to have rescued 
nations from barbarism. And in the long history of 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



195 



the gradual developement of what, in Buddhism, is 
called the Greater Vehicle, it was the Society, the 
Church, that instigated or encouraged all that was 
truest and best in the countries where it prevailed. 
Those who, look only for historical sequences, can watch 
the centuries, as they pass before their minds, with an 
unshaken equanimity, a full impartiality ; and can 
recognize — with a kind of awe that fosters sympathy — 
how insignificant is the individual, how irresistible are 
the forces working in him and around him, how cer- 
tainly will similar causes work out, even in the midst 
of the greatest differences, similar results. 

It would be a worthy subject for a future course of 
Hibbert Lectures to trace out in detail, and with all 
necessary qualifications, this marvellous parallel. I 
can only venture here on two remarks — the first in 
justification of my own choice of subject, the second 
in protest against a way in which the subject of later 
Buddhism is sometimes treated. 

It is impossible rightly to understand any one phase 
of later Buddhism in any country, without starting 
from the standpoint of the earlier Buddhism of the 
Pali Pitakas. ISTo one can write the history of later 
Buddhism, say in Siam or in China, without being 
thoroughly acquainted with the Pali Suttas. The very 
interest of the later inquiries lies in the causes that 
have produced the manifold changes that they will 
disclose. We must know not only into what, but also 

o 2 



196 



LATER FORMS OF DUDDIIISM. 



from what, t lie changes have taken place. This is 
really a truism ; and in the parallel history, with which 
we are so much more familiar, would be undisputed. 
A Buddhist, for instance, would never understand 
Spanish Christianity unless he traced it up, in a 
manner reasonably and sufficiently complete, from the 
earliest Church. Xo other method would keep him 
safe from constant misinterpretations of the phenomena 
he saw around him, of the very meaning of the litera- 
ture on which he would rely. 

And, secondly, the whole value of the inquiries into 
later Buddhism will be lost if they he directed to a 
purpose which they cannot he reasonably expected to 
serve. What should we say of a Buddhist, were he 
to use the writings of St. Augustine as a source from 
which he might ascertain the opinions of St. Paul, and 
not as a source of evidence of how those opinions had 
been, by the time of Augustine, developed? What 
would be the use of a book in which the opinions of 
Christ were set forth as obtained from the tomes of 
Calvin? or, allow mc to add, from the sermons of 
some eminent divine of the nineteenth century in 
England ? In the same way we must not expect to 
find the teachings of Gotama quite unadulterated in 
the speculations of some Chinese worthy who lived 
five hundred years after the Christian era, that is to 
say, a thousand years after Gotama was born. And if 
we want to investigate the opinions of early Buddhists, 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



197 



we must not use, as our source of evidence, the very 
interesting Sanskrit or Tibetan writings of Nepalese or 
Tibetan Doctors of the Law. 



If, for instance, you want to have a thoroughly 
erroneous and unreliable view of early Buddhism, let 
me recommend to your perusal a much-praised work 
by M. Bartkelemy St. Hilaire, entitled, "Le Bouddha 
"et sa Eeligion." This is almost entirely based on a 
French translation, through the Tibetan, of a Sanskrit 
work called the Lalita Yistara — -a poem of unknown 
date and authorship, but probably composed in Nepal, 
and by some Buddhist poet who lived some time be- 
tween six hundred and a thousand years after the birth 
of the Buddha. As evidence of what early Buddhism 
actually was, it is of about the same value as some 
mediaeval poem would be of the real facts of the Gospel 
history ; and when used for the purposes for which 
M. St. Hilaire has used it, its very real value, as evi- 
dence of Nepalese beliefs at the time when it 
was composed, is lost sight of and forgotten. 

This question of the authority of the Lalita Yistara 
is so important, the work is so often referred to as 
decisive on questions of early Buddhism, that every 
one who is reading books on the subject will do well 
to ascertain and bear in mind what is known about its 
date. 



I9S 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



M. Foucaux has stated, and it has constantly been 
repeated after him, that it was one of the books received 
into the canon by the Council held under the Buddhist 
king Kanishka, about a hundred years after Christ. 
Now the sole account we have of that Council, our sole 
authority for what took place at it, is derived from the 
travels of the famous Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Thsang, 
who visited India some hundreds of years afterwards. 
And even he neither mentions the Lalita Vistara in 
connection with the Council, nor docs he say that any 
canon of sacred writings was settled at the Council; 
nor is there, indeed, any evidence of the existence of 
any canon of Buddhist Scriptures at all, other than the 
Pali one, till many centuries later. 

Whence, then, the idea that the Lalita Vistara was 
included in a canon by that Council? It is true that 
the Pali chroniclers affirm that the Pali Pitakas were 
rehearsed at Asoka's Council, which was held at about 
the year 2o0 B.C. at Patna. But what kind of cer- 
tainty can be given to the argument that therefore 
those who held Ivaniskka's Council 350 years after- 
wards would probably rehearse their sacred books, that 
those books would probably be in Sanskrit, and that 
among those books the Lalita Vistara would probably 
be included? The chain of an argument is only as 
strong as its weakest link ; when all its links arc as 
weak as these, it is wiser to leave it alone, and turn 
to some evidence a little more reliable. 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



199 



This we have in the fact that the Lalita Vistara has 
been translated. "We have the original text in an edi- 
tion published in Calcutta ; and on comparing it with 
the Gya Cher Eol Pa, the Tibetan work which, as above 
referred to, has been published with a complete French 
translation by M. Foucaux — the most competent scholar 
in Europe for the task — we find that the two agree. 
The Tibetan, as judged by M. Foucaux's version, is in 
all substantial respects what we understand, by an exact 
translation of the Sanskrit as edited by Rajendra Lai 
Mitra for the Bibliotheca Indica. Now M. Foucaux 
assigns the Tibetan version to some date, which cannot 
be earlier, but may be much later, than the sixth cen- 
tury of our era, or a thousand years after the birth of 
Gotama. Here, then, we are on firm ground. What- 
ever the correct date of the Tibetan version may turn 
out to be, it will be conclusive evidence of the existence 
of the Lalita Vistara at that date. The moment we 
leave this point, however, we come into difficulty. 

Thus, for instance, the learned translator goes on to 
argue, from the existence of four Chinese translations, 
dating at intervals of a century or so earlier, of works 
whose original titles were similar in meaning to that 
of the Lalita Vistara, that our present Sanskrit work 
with that title is necessarily older than those transla- 
tions. But it is surely essential first to ascertain whe- 
ther they were really translations of the same work. 
This has not yet been done ; and until it has been done 



200 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



we have no external evidence which would justify the 
assignment of the Lalita Vistara to any date earlier 
than the uncertain one of its Tibetan version. All 
that we can at present say is, that hooks of a similar 
character were in existence as early as six or seven 
hundred years after the birth of Gotama, and that one 
of these may turn out to be substantially the same as 
ours. 

Even this hope is founded on the fact that two of 
these Chinese works, themselves so much later than 
early Buddhism, consist of chapters whose names in 
Chinese correspond in meaning to the Sanskrit names 
of the chapters of the Lalita Vistara. Now when two 
books on the same subject are divided into the same 
number of chapters, with practically identical titles, 
one would naturally suppose that the two works must 
be the same. That is, however, unfortunately by no 
means certain. Mr. Beal, to whose labours in these 
fields of inquiry we owe almost the whole of our know- 
ledge, has translated from the Chinese a work to which 
he gives the English title of the " Dharnmapada 
"from the Buddhist Canon." The Chinese title 
is Fa Khieu Pi Hu; that is, "Parables connected 
"with the Book of Scripture Texts;" 1 and there is a 
well-known book in the Pali Pitakas called the Dham- 
ma-padarj, or Collection of Dhamtna-verscs, that is, 



1 So Mr. Beal's "Introduction," p. 21. 



LATER FOEMS OF BUDDHISM. 



20! 



Verses found in the Dhamma books, or Verses relating 
to the Dhamma. Mr. Beal, by the title he has chosen 
for his abstract of the Chinese Text, conveys the im- 
pression that the Chinese work and the Pali one are 
the same. The opening words of his Preface are : 
"There are four principal copies of Dhammapada in 
" Chinese ;" he calls the Chinese books generally 
"faithful versions of works everywhere known in 
"India," and this particular work a "version of the 
"Dhammapada." The Chinese work, too, has thirty- 
nine chapters ; and of these, twenty-six have titles 
which (in meaning) are the same, or very nearly the 
same, as the titles of the twenty-six chapters into 
which the Pali work is divided. And yet, in spite of 
all this, the two works are essentially different ! They 
are written on a different plan ) the Chinese is evi- 
dently much later (probably some centuries later) than 
the Pali one ; and though a few of the verses chosen, 
from the Dhamma books, for insertion in the Dham- 
mapadarj, recur, in a more or less mangled shape, in 
the course of the stories constituting the Pa Khieu Pi 
Hu, the great bulk of the earlier work is not found in 
the later one, and the great bulk of the later work is 
not found in the earlier one. 1 



1 Of course none of the Introductory Stories occur in the Pali 
book ; and as regards the verses themselves, the correctness of what 
1 have said will appear from the following analysis, which is arranged 
for purposes of comparison in parallel columns. The verses found 



202 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



The two books arc about as much, and about as 
little, alike as two modern hymn-books; and to call 
the later Chinese work " The Dhammapada," is very 
much the same as if a publisher were to call a volume 



in tho Pali work arc placed in the first column when they recur in 
the Cliinesc work, the second column giving the page of Mr. Beal's 
translation of the Chinese work where similar verses occur in it. 



Dliammapuda. Fa Kbieu Fi Hu. 



1 


63 


2 


64 


11 


64 


12 


65 


13 


65 


14 


06 


16 


67 


17 


67 


43 


73 


44 


75 


45 


75 


46 


75 


54 


70 


5S 


70 


59 


76 


62 


77 


63 


77 


64 


77 


65 


78 


67 


78 


80 


79 


81 


79 


82 


80 


96 


81 


97 


81 


98 


S2 


99 


82 



Dhammapada. Fa, Khieu Pi Uu. 



107 


87 


108 


89 


109 


90 


127 


93 


128 




137 


95 


138 


95 


139 


96 


140 


96 


111 


97 


212 


119 


213 


119 


214 


119 


218 


120 


229 


122 


230 


122 


243 


125 


259 


127 


260 


126 


261 


120 


26-4 


127 


265 


127 


270 


127 


324 


145 


326 


146 


338 


148 


383 


163 



LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 



203 



of religious tales containing about one-seventh of the 
hymns included in that well-known and much-respected 
work, by the distinctive title of "Hymns Ancient 
and Modern." Both the likeness and the difference 
between two such books and between these two Bud- 
dhist books would be due to causes of a similar kind. 
The Pali work and the Chinese one are alike because 
the Chinese one is derived from some work descended 
from an ancestry related to the Pali one ; and it is 
different because it is the outcome of a different school, 
and gives expression to a belief which, though ori- 
ginally the same, has passed through various stages of 
modification, which have made it essentially different. 

Chinese works bearing similar titles, and even divided 
into chapters bearing similar titles, are not necessarily, 
therefore, "translations" of* any Indian work with a 
like name. I am quite aware that there are Chinese 
works that are translations of Indian ones; but no 
Chinese work has yet been published which is a trans- 
lation of any Indian work, whether Sanskrit or Pali, 
known to us. All that I ask for is greater care in 
speaking of Chinese works as "the same" as their 

Dhammapada. Fa Kbieu Pi IIu. Dhammapada. Fa Khieu Pi Hu. 

384 163 394 164 

393 163 410 164 

Total, 58 verses, out of a total in the Pali Dhammapada of 423, 
recurring (some of them much changed) in the corresponding 
chapters of the Fa Khieu Pi Hu. See, further, my review in the 
Academy for August, 1878. 



204 INDIVIDUALITY. 

Indian prototypes, without sufficient evidence ; and I 
have no doubt that real translations will reward the 
search of students of Chinese Buddhism, the value of 
whose labours, and especially of those of Mr. Beal, 
every one will be anxious to acknowledge as beyond 
dispute. 

This argument will have appeared long. It will not 
have been too long if it has made clear to you with 
. hat difficulties the attempt to give a detailed account 
of the curious history of later Buddhism must at prc- 
m nt be beset. It has seemed to me far preferable, in 
the few hours allotted to me, to discuss those parts of 
Buddhism which are comparatively so certain, than to 
occupy your time with such discussions as this one 
about the Lalita Yistai'a, where the details arc intri- 
cate, and the result not only doubtful, but affording 
little ground for useful comparisons. I cannot but 
think, indeed, that any useful discussions of any of the 
numerous later forms of Buddhism will bo impossible 
till we arrive at an accurate understanding, a more 
complete consensus of opinion, regarding the earliest 
Buddhism. And I should not have touched upon the 
literary questions discussed in the last few pages, had 
it not seemed to me necessary to enter a protest against 
the careless and much too common habit of using 
works dating many centuries after the time of the 
Buddha, as evidence of the opinions or the teachings 
of Gotama himself. 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



205 



I would now invite your attention to a fundamental 
idea of early Buddhism, closely connected with the 
doctrine of Karma, which want of time in the third 
Lecture has compelled me to reserve for this last 
Lecture. 

Tou will have gathered from previous Lectures that 
early Buddhism, so far as it was an ethical reformation, 
propounded a rule of life divided into three great divi- 
sions. There was a system of lower morality, intended 
for those who still wished to remain in the world. 
There was a second system, including the lower, but 
going beyond it, for those who had entered the Order. 
And there was the third, and highest, including both 
the others, but going again beyond them, for those who 
had entered what is called the Ariyo Atthangiko 
Maggo, the Noble Eight-fold Path; that is to say, 
the system of intellectual and moral self-culture and 
self-control which culminated in Arahatship. 

What we understand by morality is almost confined 
to the lowest of the three. The desirability of aban- 
doning the world, the consequences of having done so, 
the pursuits with which the recluse should or should 
not occupy himself, are considered in the second. Even 
this second system, much stricter than the first, is called 
" a mere trifle, only a lower thing," 1 as compared with 



1 Brahmajala Sutta, i. 10. 



200 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



the insight and freedom of* Hie Arahat : and the dis- 
ciple is not to be satisfied with having attained to this 
Lesser aim. 1 The third consists, on the positive side, 
of the Seven Jewels of the Law, enumerated in the 
Book of the Great Decease; and on the negative, 
of the fi tters and veils and hindrances which the ear- 
nest Buddhist has to break, to remove, and to over- 
come. 2 Incidentally, I have touched upon several 
parts of this system of the Noble Path in former Lec- 
tures in this course, and you will recollect that its 
result is the state of the man made perfect according to 
the Buddhist faith, the state of Arahatship, one side of 
which is Nirvana, that is, the extinction, in this life 
and in this world, of craving thirst and of its conse- 
sequenccs — lust, hatred, delusion and ignorance. 

I would just notice, in passing, that it is craving 
thirst, and not desire, which in the Arahat is said to 



1 Book of tLe Great Decease, i. 7. Compare St. Paul in 
Phil. iii. 13. 

2 A summary of the first, the lowest stage of Buddhist morality, 
will he found given from the Sigalovada Sutta in my manual enti- 
tled Buddhism, pp. 143 — 148. An outline of the second will he 
found there, and again ahove in the Tevijja Sutta; and the third 
will hs fully treated of in the forthcoming work hy Dr. Morris on 
The Seven Jewels of the Law. See also, on Arahatship, my 
Lecture on the " Foundation of the Kingdom of Eighteousness," 
published in the Fortnightly Beview, No. clvi. (and also separately) ; 
the translation of the Sutta, so called, in my Buddhist Suttas 
from the Pali (Oxford, 1881); and pp. 107 — 112 of my manual, 
Buddhism (London, 1877). 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



207 



be extinct. The second division of the Noble Eight- 
fold Path is the cultivation of right desires. It is only 
the evil desires, the grasping, selfish aims, which the 
Arahat has to overcome ; and those, unfortunately too 
numerous, writers who place Nirvana in the absence 
of desire, are only showing thereby how exaggerated 
is the importance which they attach to isolated pas- 
sages and to careless translations. 

But the point to which I would more especially 
invite your attention is one referred to in the passage 
I read last Tuesday from the Book of the Great De- 
cease. Arahatship is essentially a condition of insight ; 
and we found the insight of the Arahat there divided 
into seven kinds — insight into impermanency, into 
non-individuality, into corruption, into the danger of 
evil-doing, into sanctification, into purity of heart, into 
Nirvana. I am afraid that the mere reading of these 
words conveys but very little insight into the meaning 
which lies hidden beneath them. Each of them would 
require at least a whole Lecture to bring out all its 
original connotation, all that it suggested to a trained 
Buddhist, and to take away from the ideas which it 
now suggests to modern Christians all that is inevitably 
imported into them from the Christian use of the Avords. 
Any one present who is interested in practical ethics, 
apart from creeds, will find these and the other various 
details of Arahatship worth the trouble of looking into. 
I can only propose here to say a few words on the first 



208 INDIVIDUALITY. 

two in tin's list. What do they menu? Their nnmcs 
are Anicca-sanna and Anatta-sahTia, the percep- 
tion of imperraanency and of non-individuality. The}* 
;ire the very first. "Without them, the others cannot 
exist, that is, cannot exist completely. Now it is 
curious and noteworthy that the very first of tlie Sarj- 
yojanas, the Fetters which the disciple has to break 
on the way to Arahatship, is also the doctrine of indi- 
viduality (Atta-vada). It follows that Ave have to do 
here with a belief the attainment of which is regarded 
as of primary importance in the Buddhist system of 
self-culture, or rather with a delusion whose existence 
in the mind is regarded as incompatible with any 
advance along the higher life. 

And it is not by chance, not unadvisedly, that the 
foundation of the higher life, the gate to the heaven 
that is to be reached on earth, is placed, not in emotion, 
not in feeling, but in knowledge, in the victory over 
delusions. The moral progress of mankind depends on 
the progress of knowledge ; the moral progress of the 
individual depends, according to Buddhism, upon his 
knowledge. Sin is folly. It is delusion that leads to 
crime. Men used to slay their children, and children 
their parents. They have grown out of that, and 
require no special, no extraordinary personal wisdom 
to abstain from murder and theft. A man ignorant 
compared with his fellows may practise the Silas. But 
to make any advance beyond the average standpoint, 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



209 



he must get rid of delusions ; he must see things as 
they are, in a way that ordinary people do not; ho 
must grasp ideas beyond the grasp of the average mind. 
The fool, the dull man, can never be an Arahat. Docs 
this sound very materialistic, very hard? There is 
many a man, foolish and dull enough in the world's 
estimation, who gains but little money, and who earns 
but little social success, whose eyes are nevertheless 
open to things beyond the ken of the man successful 
in the world through a hardness of mind that is incom- 
patible with the humility of faith. The dullness which 
prevents the attainment of Arahatship is not what the 
world calls dullness ; and it often blinds the eyes of 
the cleverest, the most successful among men. The 
Buddhist doctrine of the necessity of insight was an 
encouragement, not a warning, to the poor in spirit ; 
and it has analogies very close and very real with St. 
Paul's doctrine of justification by faith. 

But what is this insight which is the entrance to 
Arahatship ? To appreciate the question, we must go 
back, as usual, to the early Upanishads. The know- 
ledge which in those writings is praised, with a con- 
stant reiteration, as the highest of all gifts, the birth- 
place, the source, of abiding salvation, is the knowledge 
of the identity between the individual and God, in 
whom and by whom the individual lives, and moves, 
and has his being. As for example : 

" lie is my self within the heart, smaller than a corn 

p 



210 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



"of rice, smaller than a barley-corn, smaller than a 
li mustard-seed, smaller than a canary-seed — yea, than 
" the kernel of a canary-seed ! lie also is my self 

within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than 
" the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these 

worlds. He from whom all works, all desires, all 
"sweet odours and tastes proceed, who embraces all 
"this, who never speaks and is never surprised, he, 
"my self within the heart, is that Brahman." 1 And 
again : 

" What I (the worshipper) am, that is he. What 
"he is, that am I. This has been said by a Pushi : 
" ' The sun is the self of all that moves and rests.' Let 
"him look to that. Let him look to that." 2 

Such knowledge is better, according to the Upani- 
shads, than all works, than all rituals. The possession 
of it is their justification by faith. The ever-present 
sense of union with God inspires their deepest poetry, 
and must have given a tone to the life of not a few of 
those ancient thinkers. 

How, then, did Gotama deal with this idea? We 
have the answer in the two perceptions that are the be- 
ginning of the insight, the mental grasp of the Arahat. 

The first is impcrmanency. The Arahat must tho- 
roughly realize, first of all, that all things, all beings, 
are impermanent. To the peasant, the huge mountain 

1 Chandogya Upanishad, iii. 14. 

2 Aitareya Aranyaka, ii. 2, 4, quoting Rig Veda, i. 115, 7. 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



211 



of the Himalaya range, at the foot of which, he tills 
his tiny field, seems fixed, and sure, and lasting. The 
Arahat must see through this delusion. The great 
mountain, and the broad earth on which it rests, must 
convey to his mind no such impression. To him, it 
must seem, as it really is, a changing, variable, imper- 
manent, unstable thing, whose existence, compared 
with the long ages of the revolving Kappas (the a;ons 
of the world's renovation and dissolution), is only for 
a day. And he must not harbour in the remotest 
cranny of his mind 1 a single exception to this invariable 
rule. To him, no outward form, no compound thing, 
no creature, no creator, no existence of any kind, must 
appear to be other than a temporary collocation of its 
component parts, fated inevitably to be dissolved. And 
the glamour of the Yeclic poetry must not deceive him, 
the beauty of the figurative language of the Upanishads 
must not mislead him. The gods are but beings, living 
under brighter, happier conditions than men. They, 
too, have forms, invisible to mortal ken ; they, too, are 
compound things, like everything else. Their heavens 
will be rolled up as a garment, and they themselves 
shall be dissolved. 

But is there not inside the spirit form of the gods, 
inside the bodily form of men and beasts, some abiding 
principle, some self, that survives the dissolution of 
its case, its sheath, and is itself impermanent? The 
* Compare Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 253. 

r 2 



212 INDIVIDUALITY. 

answer of Buddhism is not only that the idea is a delu- 
sion, sprung from the impressions received through 
the five senses, but that this delusion prevents the 
attainment of full height in the Buddhist scale of right- 
eousness, is the very first thing to be got rid of by any 
person who wishes to reach up to anything beyond the 
ordinary morality of man to man. 

Perhaps the most frequently quoted and most popular 
verses in Pali Buddhist books arc these : 
"How transient are all component things ! 
Growth is their nature and decay : 
They arc produced, they are dissolved again : 
And then is best, — when they have sunk to rest I" 1 

And they are explained by an orthodox commentator 
as follow r s : 

"In these verses the words, 'How transient are 
"'all component things!' mean, 'Dear lady Sub- 
" ' hadda, wheresoever and by whatsoever causes made 
"'or come together, compounds, 2 — that is, all those 
" ' things which possess the essential constituents (whe- 
" ' thermaterial or mental) of existing things, 3 — all these 
" ' compounds are impermanence itself. For of these, 
"'form 4 is impermanent, reason 5 is impermanent, 

1 The last clause is literally, " Blessed is their cessation," where 
the word for cessation, upasamo, is derived from the word sam, 
"to be calm, to be quiet," and means cessation by sinking into rest. 

2 Sarjkhara. 8 Khandilyatanadayo. 
* Iluparj. 5 Vinnanarj. 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



213 



" ' the (mental) eye 1 is impermanent, and qualities 2 
" £ are impermanent. And whatever treasure there be, 
" ' whether conscious or unconscious, that is transitory. 
"'Understand, therefore, 'How transient are all com- 
" ' ponent things !' 

"And why? 'Growth is their nature and 
" ' decay.' These, all, have the inherent quality of 
" coming into (individual) existence, and have also the 
"inherent quality of growing old; or (in other words) 
"their very nature is to come into existence and to be 
"broken up. Therefore should it be understood that 
"they are impermanent. 

"And since they are impermanent, when 'they 
"'are produced, they are dissolved again.' 
" Having come into existence, having reached a state, 3 
" they are surely dissolved. For all these things come 
"into existence, taking an individual form, and are 
"dissolved, being broken up. To them, as soon as 
"there is birth, there is what is called a state; as 
"soon as there is a state, there is what is called dis- 
integration. 4 For to the unborn there is no such 
"thing as state, and there is no such thing as a state 
"which is without disintegration. Thus are all com- 
" pounds, having attained to the three characteristic 
"marks (of impermanency, pain, and want of any 



1 Kakkhurj. 
8 Thiti. 



2 
4 



D ham ma. 
Bharjgo. 



214 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



"abiding principle), 1 subject, in this way and in that 
"way, to dissolution. All these component things, 
"therefore, without exception, are impermanent, mo- 
"mcntary, 2 despicable, unstable, disintegrating, trem- 
" bling, quaking, unlasting, sure to depart, 3 only for a 
"time, 3 and without substance; — as temporary 4 as a 
"phantom, as the mirage, or as foam !" 

Buddhism sees no distinction of any fundamental 
character, no difference, except an accidental or phe- 
nomenal difference, between gods, men, plants, animals 
and things. All arc the product of causes that have been 
acting during the immeasurable ages of the past; and 
all will be dissolved. Of sentient beings, as we have 
seen in the third Lecture, nothing will survive save 
the result of their actions ; and he who believes, Avho 
hopes, in anything else, will be blinded, hindered, 
hampered in his religious growth by the most fatal of 
delusions. 

Is it not interesting, is it not strange, that this 
should be the teaching of the religion which numbers 

1 Aneccan, dukkliaijj anattan. See Jataka, i. 275; and, on 
the last, Mahapariiubbana Sutta, i. 10, and Alalia Vagga, i. vi. 
38—47. 

2 Khanika. Sec Oldenberg's note on Dlpavamsa, i. 53. 

3 Payata, literally "departed." The forms payati and payato, 
given by Childers, should be corrected into payati and- payato. 
See Jataka, i. 146. 

4 Tavakalika. See Jataka, i. 121, where the word is used of 
a cart let out on hire for a time only. 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



215 



more adherents than any other religion which has 
appeared upon the earth ? To us it seems devoid of 
hope. Is it really so ? Must we have a belief in some 
personal happiness that we ourselves are to enjoy here- 
after ? Is it not enough to hope that our^self-clenials 
and our struggles will add to the happiness of others? 
Surely Ave have even so a gain far beyond our deserts ; 
for we receive more, infinitely more, than we can ever 
give. We inherit the result of the Karma of the count- 
less multitudes who have lived and died, who have 
struggled and suffered, in the long ages of the past. 
And if we can sometimes catch a glimpse of the glories 
that certainly lie hid behind the veil of the infinite 
future, is not that enough, and more than enough, to 
fill our hearts with an abiding faith and hope stronger, ' 
deeper, truer, than any selfishness can give ? 

I do not know. But there is at least a poetry and 
a beauty in these things that may open our eyes a 
little to things we know not of, that may invite us to 
look into these matters a little further. We can at least 
rejoice that the cultivated world is beginning to enter 
upon the fruits of Oriental research in Indian matters, 
and that the habit of Western historians of considering 
all things at any distance from the basin of the Medi- 
terranean as beneath notice, and of thus practically 
ignoring the existence of about two-thirds of the human 
race, is beginning to be broken through. It would be 
useless to attempt to predict the measure of the influ- 



216 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



ence which this chang e of standpoint will eventually have 
upon our ideas of history: but it may be compared to the 
results which followed inevitably on the discovery that 
this earth was not the centre of the universe. And 
when we call to mind how closely intertwined are 
religious with historical beliefs and arguments, we may 
realize in some degree what effect may follow upon the 
unveiling of a long history of civilization, independent 
of Egyptian, Jewish or Greek thought; upon the cur- 
tain being drawn back from a new drama of struggling 
races and rival religions, filled with ideas strangely 
familiar and as curiously strange. It is not too much 
to say that a New World has been once more disco- 
vered by adventurers as persevering as Columbus, and 
j M il iaps at present earning as little gratitude as he did 
from his contemporaries ; and that the inhabitants of 
the Old World cannot, if they would, go back again 
to the quiet times when the New World was not, 
because it was unknown. Every one to whom the 
entrancing story of man's gradual rise and progress 
has charms peculiarly its own, will welcome the new 
light; others will have to face the new facts, and 
find room for them in their conceptions of the world's 
history — that history which is the Epic of Humanity. 
Happy are we if the strains of that epic are ever 
ringing in our ears, if the spirit of that epic is ever 
ruling in our hearts ! An abiding sense of the long 
past whose beginnings are beyond imagination^ and of 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



217 



the long future whose end we cannot realize, may fill 
us indeed with a knowledge of our own insignificance 
• — the hubbies on the stream which flash into light for 
a moment and are seen no more. But it will perhaps 
bring us nearer to a sense of the Infinite than man in 
his clearest moments, in his deepest moods, can ever 
otherwise hope to reach. It will enable us to appre- 
ciate what is meant by the Solidarity of Man, and will 
fill us with an overpowering awe and wonder at the 
immensity of that series of which we are but a few of 
the tiny links. And the knowledge of what man has 
been in distant times, in far-off lands, under the influ- 
ence of ideas which, at first sight seem to us so strange, 
will strengthen within us that reverence, sympathy, 
and love, which must follow on a realization of the 
mysterious complexity of being, past, present and to 
come, that is wrapt up in every human life. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX T. 



Speech in Parliament in 1530 on comparing Eeligions in order to 
discover Truth, referred to above, pp. 4 — 6. 

The speech referred to in the first Lecture was first pointed out 
to me in Cobbett's Parliamentary History, Vol. i. p. 503, by my 
friend Mr. Allanson Picton. It is there taken word for word from 
an older and anonymous work, now rare, entitled, " The Parliamen 
"tary or Constitutional History of England .... by several Hands," 
of which the second edition appeared in 1762. The speech is so 
interesting that I need make no apology for quoting it in full, with 
the context. The passage occurs in Vol. iii. of the earlier work, 
pp. 57 and foil. 

" Many Abuses which the Laity received daily from the Clergy 
"were loudly complained of ; and the King, being now willing that 
'■' they should be strictly inquired into, referred the Kedress thereof 
" to the Commons in the Parliament. Complaints also being made 
"in that House 1 against exactions for Probates of Testimonies and 
" Mortuaries ; for Pluralities, Non-residence, and against Priests 
"that were Farmers of Lands, Tanners, Woolbuyers, &c, the Spi- 
" rituality were much offended at these Proceedings ; and when the 
"Bills for regulating these Exorbitances were brought before the 
" House of Lords, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, made a remark- 
" able Speech against them. As the Design of these Inquiries is to 
" preserve an exact Impartiality, we shall give this Speech verbatim ; 



1 These Complaints were drawn up into six Articles, and are in Fox's Acta 
and Monuments, Vol. ii. p. 907 (edit. 1595). 



UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF 



" as it is printed in a small Treatise on the Lifo and Death of that 

" Predate. 1 

" ' My Lords, 

"'Here arc certain Bills exhibited against the Clergy, wherein 
"'there aro Complaints made against the Viciousness, Idleness, 
" ' Rapacity, and Cruelty of Bishops, Abbots, Priests, and their 
"'Officials. But, my Lords, are all vicious, all idle, all ravenous 
"'and cruel Priests, or Bishops? And, for such as are such, are 
"'there not Laws provided already against such? Is there any 
" ' Abuse that we do not seek to rectify f Or, can there be such a 
" ' Rectification as that there shall be no Abuses ? Or, are not Cler- 
" ' gymen to rectify the Abuses of the Clergy t Or, shall men find 
"J Fault with other Mens Manners, while they forget their own; 
"'and punish where they have no Authority to correct? If we be 
" 'not executive in our Laws, let each Man suffer Delinquency ; or, 
" f if we have not Power, aid us with your Assistance, and we shall 
" t give you Thanks. But, my Lords, I hear there is a Motion made, 
" ' that the small Monasteries should be given up into the King's 
" ' Hands, which makes me fear that it is not so much the Good as 
" ' the Goods of the Church that is looked after. Truly, my Lords, 
'"how this may sound in your Ears I cannot tell, but to me it 
"'appears no otherwise, than as if our Holy Mother tlie Cliurch 
" ' were to become a Bondmaid, and now brought into Servility and 
" ' Thraldom ; and, by little and little, to be quite banished out of 
"'those Dwelling-Places, which the Piety and Liberality of our 
" ' Forefathers, as most bountiful Benefactors, have conferred upon 
"'her. Otherwise, to what tendeth these portentous and curious 
" ' Petitions from the Commons ? To no other Intent or Purpose, 
"'but to bring the Clergy in Contempt with the Laity, that they 
" ' may seize their Patrimony. But, my Lords, beware of yourselves 
'"and your Country; beware of your Holy Mother the Catholic 
"'Church; the People are subject to Novelties, and Lutheranism 



1 The Life and Death of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, &c., lij 

Dr. Thos. Bailey (12mo, London, 1655; reprinted, 1739). 



AS TEST OF TETJTH. 



"'spreads itself amongst us. Bemember Germany and Bohemia, 
" 'what Miseries are befallen them already, and let our Neighbours 
"'Houses that are now on Fire teach us to beware of our own 
" ' Disasters. Wherefore, my Lords, I will tell you plainly what I 
" ' think ; that, except ye resist manfully, by your Authorities, this 
'"violent Heap of Mischiefs offered by the Commons, you shall see 
'"all Obedience first drawn from the Clergy, and secondly from 
'"yourselves; and if you search into the true Causes of all these 
" ' Mischiefs which reign amongst them, you shall find that they all 
" ' arise through Want of Faith.' 

" The same Authority 1 tells us, that this Speech pleased or 
" displeased several of the House of Lords, as they were diversly 
" inclined to forward or flatter the King's Designs. But, amongst 
" them all, none made a Beply to it but only the Duke of Norfolk, 
" who said to the Bishop, 

" ' My Lord of Bochester, Many of these Words might have been 
" ' well spared ; but I wist it is often seen that the greatest Clerks 
" ' are not always the wisest men.' 

" To which the Bishop replied : 

" ' My Lord, I do not remember any Fools in my Time that ever 
" ' proved great Clerks.' 

"When the Lower House heard of this Speech, they conceived 
"so great Indignation against the Bishop that they immediately 
" sent their Speaker, Audley, attended with a Number of the Mem- 
" bers, to complain of it to the King ; and to let his Majesty know 
'"how grievously they thought themselves injured thereby, for 
" ' charging them with Lack of Faith, as if they had been Infidels 
" ' or Heretics, &c.' 

"To satisfy the Commons, the King sent for the Eishop of 
"Bochester to come before him; when, being present, the King 
" demanded of him, why he spoke in such a Manner 1 The Brelate 
" answered, ' That, being in Faiiiament, he spake his Mind freely in 
" 'Defence of the Church, which he saw daily injured and oppressed 



1 The above-mentioned Life of Fisher. 



224 



UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF 



"'by the common People, whose Office it was not to Judge of her 
" ' Maimers, much less to reform them ; and therefore, he said, he 
" ' thought himself in Conscience bound to defend her in all that 
" ' lay within his Power.' However, the King advised him 'to use 
" ' his Words more temperately another Time,' which was all ho 
" then said to him. 

" But the Injury the Commons thought they had received, by this 
"reflection, was not so easily digested; for one of the Members, 
" making Use of the Gospel Doctrine so far, says the Noble Histo- 
" nan, 1 as to take a reasonable Liberty to Judge of Things, and, 
" being piqued at the Bishop for laying it all on Want of Faith, 
"stood up in that House, and spoke to this effect : 
" ' Mr. Speaker, 

" ' If none else but the Bishop of Rochester, or his Adherents, 
" ' did hold this Language, it would less trouble me ; but since so 
" 'many religious and different Sects, now conspicuous in the whole 
"'World, do not only vindicate unto themselves the Name of the 
" ' true Church, but labour betwixt Invitations and Threats, for 
'"nothing more than to make us resign our Faith to a simple 
" ' Obedience, I shall crave Leave to propose what I think fit in this 
" ' Case for us Laiques and Secular Persons to do ; not that I will 
" ' make my Opinion any Rule to others, when any better Expedient 
" 'shall be offered, but that I would be glad we considered hereof, 
" ' as the greatest Affair that doth or may concern us. 

"'For if, in all human Actions, it be hard to find that Medium, 
" ' or even Temper, which may keep us from declining into Extremes, 
" 'it wdl be much more difficult in religious Worship ; both as the 
'"Path is supposed narrower, and the Precipices more dangerous 
" 1 on every side. And because each Man is created by God a free 
'"Citizen of the World, and obliged to nothing so much as the 
" ' Inquiry of those Means by which he may attain his everlasting 
" ' Happiness, it will be fit to examine to whose Tuition and Conduct 
• ' he commits himself. For as several Teachers not only differing 



1 Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., p. 295. 



AS TEST OF TRUTH. 



225 



" ' in Language, Habit, and Ceremony, or at least in some of these, 
"'but peremptory and opposite in their Doctrines, present them- 
" ' selves, much Circumspection must be used : Here then, taking 
" ' his Prospect, he shall find these Guides directing him to several 
" ' Ways, whereof the first extends no further than to the Laws and 
" ' Religions of each Man's native Soil or Diocese, without pass- 
" 'ing those Bounds. The second, reaching much further, branches 
'"itself into that Diversity of Religions and Philosophies, that not 
" ' only are, but have been extant in former Times, untill he be able 
'"to determine which is best. But, in either of these, no little 
" ' Difficulties will occur : For, if each Man ought to be secure of all 
'"that is taught at home, without inquiring further, how can he 
" ' answer his Conscience ? "When looking abroad, the Terrors of 
" ' everlasting Damnation shall be denounced on him, by the several 
" ' Hierarchies and visible Churches of the World, if he believes any 
" ' Doctrine but theirs. And that, amongst these again, such able 
" 'and understanding Persons may be found, as in all other Affairs 
" ' will equal his Teachers. Will it be fit that he believe God hath 
" 'inspired his own Church and Religion only, and deserted the rest, 
" ' when yet Mankind is so much of one Offspring, that it hath not 
'"only the same Pater Communis in God, but is come all from the 
'"same carnal Ancestors? Shall each Man, without more Exami- 
"' nation, believe his Priests in what Religion soever; and, when 
" 'he hath done, call their Doctrine his Faith? On the other Side, 
"'if he must argue Controversies before he can be satisfied, how 
" ' much Leisure must he obtain ? How much Wealth and Substance 
" ' must he consume ? How many Languages must he learn ? And 
" ' how many Authors must he read 1 How many Ages must he 
" ' look into ? How many Faiths must he examine ? How many 
'"Expositions must he confer, and how many Countries must he 
"'wander into, and how many Dangers must he run? Briefly, 
" ' would not our Life, on these Terms, be a perpetual Peregrination, 
" ' while each Man posted into the other's Country to learn the Way 
" 'to Heaven, without yet that he could say at last he had known 
" ' or tried all ? What remains then to be done ? Must he take al] 

Q 



UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF 



" 'that each Priest, upon Pretence of Inspiration, would teach him, 
" ' because it might be so ; or may he leave all, because it might be 
'otherwise? Certainly, to embrace all Religions, according to 
" ' ihcir various and repugnant Rites, Tenets, Traditions, and Faiths, 
" 'is impossible, when yet in one Age it were not possible, after 
"'incredible Pains and Expenccs, to learn out and number them. 
4 ' On the other Side, to reject all Religions indifferently is as impious, 
"'there being no Nation that in some Kind or other doth not 
•"worship God, bo that there will he a Necessity to distinguish. 
" ' Not yet that any Man will be able, upon Comparison, to discern 
"'which is the perfectest among the many professed in the whole 
•"World, each of them being of that large Extent, that no Man's 
•"Understanding will serve to comprehend it in its uttermost 
" ' Latitude and Signification : But, at least, that every Man might 
•'•vindicate and sever, in his particular Religion, the more essential 
" ' and demonstrative Parts from the rest, without being moved so 
'"much at the Threats and Promises of any other Religion that 
"'would make him obnoxious, as to depart from this Way, there 
" 'being no ordinary Method so intelligible, ready, and compendious, 
•' ' for conducting each Man to his desired End. Having thus there- 
'"fore recollected himself, and together implored the Assistance of 
" ' that Supreme God whom all Nations acknowledge, he must labour, 
" ' in the next place, to find out what inward Means his Providence 
" ' hath delivered to discern the true not only from the false, but 
" 'even from the likely and possible, each of them requiring a pecu- 
'"liar Scrutiny and Consideration: Neither shall he fly thus to 
'"particular Reason, which may soon lead him to Heresy; but, 
"'after a due Seperation of the more doubtful and controverted 
'"Parts, shall hold himself to common, authentic, and universal 
"'Truths, and consequently inform himself, what in the several 
'"Articles proposed to him is so taught, as it is first written in 
" ' the Heart, and together delivered in all the Laws and Religions 
" ' he can hear of in the whole World : This certainly can never 
•' 'deceive him, since therein he shall find out how far the Impres- 
" 'sions of God's Wisdom and Goodness are extant in all Mankind, 



AS TEST OF TRUTH. 



227 



" ' and to what Degrees his universal Providence hath dilated itself ; 
" ' while thus ascending to God by the same Steps he descends to 
" ' us, he cannot fail to encounter the Divine Majesty. 

"'Neither, ought it to trouble him if he finds these Truths 
"' variously complicated with Difficulties or Errors; since, without 
"'insisting on more Points than what are clearly agreed on every 
" ' Side, it will be his Part to reduce them into Method and Order; 
" ' which also is not hard, they being but few, and apt to Connec- 
' ; 'tion: So that it will concern our several Teachers to initiate 1 us 
" ' in this Doctrine, before they come to any particular Direction ; 2 
"'lest otherwise they do like those who would persuade us to 
"'renounce Daylight to study only by their Candle. It will be 
" ' worth the Labour, assuredly, to inquire how far these universal 
" ' Notions will guide us, before we commit ourselves to any of their 
'"abstruse and scholastic Mysteries, or supernatural and private 
" ' Revelations ; not yet but that they also may challenge a just 
'"Place in our Belief, when they are delivered upon warran table 
" 'Testimony ; but that they cannot be understood as so indifferent 
" 'and infallible Principles for. the Instruction of all Mankind. 

" ' Thus, among many supposed inferior and questionable Deities 
'"worshipped in the four Quarters of the World, we shall find one 
" ' Chief so taught us, as above others to be highly reverenced. 

"'Among many Rites, Ceremonies, Volumes, &c, delivered us 
" 'as Instruments or Parts of his Worship, he shall find Virtue so 
" ' eminent, as it alone concludes and sums up the rest. Insomuch 
"'as there is no Sacrament which is not finally resolved into it; 
" ' good Life, Charity, Faith in, and Love of, God, being such 
" ' necessary and essential Parts of Religion, that all the rest are 
" ' finally closed and determined in them. 

'"Among the many Expirations, Lustrations, and Propitiations 
" ' for our Sins, taught in the several Quarters of the World in 
" 'sundry Times, we shall find that none doth avail without hearty 
" 'Sorrow for our Sins, and a true Repentance towards God, whom 
" ' we have offended. 

" ' And, lastly, amidst the divers Places and Manners of Reward 



Sic lege for imitate. 2 Query, lege doctrine. 

Q 2 



228 



UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF. 



'"and Punishment, which former Ages hath delivered, we shall 
"'find God's Justice and Mercy not so limited, but that he can 
"'extend either of them even beyond Death, and consequently 
"'recompense or chastise eternallv. 

'"These, therefore, as universal and undoubted Truths, should, 
" 1 in my Opinion, be first received ; they will at least keep us from 

Impiety and Atheism, and together lay a Foundation for God's 
" ' Service and the Hope of a better Life : Besides, it will reduce 
'"Men's Minds from uncertain and controverted Points, to a solid 
"'Prso'ice of Virtue ; or, when we fall from it, to an unfeigr.ed 
" 'Repentance and Purpose, thro' God's Grace, to amend our sinful 
'"Life, without making Pardon so easy, cheap, or mercenary as 
" 'some of them do. Lastly, it will dispose us to a General Concord 
" ' and Peace ; for, when we are agreed concerning the eternal Causes 
" ' and Means of our Salvation, why shouldNve so much differ for 
" 'the rest? Since as these Principles exclude nothing of Faith or 
"'Tradition, in what Age or Manner soever it intervened, each 
" ' Nation may be permitted the Belief of any pious Miracle that 
"'conduceth to God's Glory; without that, on this Occasion, we 
'"need to scandalize or offend each other. The Common Truths 
"'in Religion, formerly mentioned, being firmer Bonds of Unity, 
" 'than that any Thing emergent out of Traditions, whether written 
"'or unwritten, should dissolve them; let us therefore establish 
" ' and fix these Catholic or universal Notions ; they will not hinder 
" ' us to believe what soever else is faithfully taught upon the Autho- 
"'rity of the Church. So that whether the Eastern, Western, 
"'Northern, or Southern Teachers, &c, and particularly whether 
" ' my Lord of Rochester, Luther, Eccius, Zuinglius, Erasmus, 
" ' Melancthon, &c, be in the Bight, we Laiques may so build upon 
"'these Catholic and infallible Grounds of Religion, as whatsoever 
" ' Superstructures of Faith be raised, these Foundations yet may 
" 'support them.' 

"This Speech was differently taken also by those who were still 
" Friends or Enemies to the Church of Rome. However, the Majo- 
rity being of the latter Opinion, a Reformation in Religion was 
"resolved upon, as far as was consistent with the established Laws 
" of the Kir.crdom.' 

O 



APPENDIX It 



Eeligions Liberty and Toleration as held by the early Buddhists. 

In support of the allegation in the note to p. 4, I annex here some 
passages which illustrate the views on respect for the opinions of 
others held generally by Buddhists ahout two thousand years before 
religious liberty was advocated by isolated thinkers in Europe. 

1. Brahma- jala Sutta. 

The following words are placed, at the commencement of the 
Sutta, in the mouth of Gotama. The Sutta is the first in the 
Digha Nikaya, and is probably one of the very oldest statements of 
the Buddhist Dhamma, or Doctrine, now extant. It is still much 
read, and very popular among the orthodox Buddhists. 

"Should those who are not with us, Bhikkhus, speak in dis- 
" praise of me, or of the Dhamma, or of the Saijgha, you are not on 
"that account to give way to anger, heartburning or discontent. 
" Should those who are not with us, Bhikkhus, speak in dispraise 
"of me, or of the Dhamma, or of the Sarjgha, if you were on that 
"account to be either enraged or displeased, it is you (not they) 
"upon whom the danger would fall; for would you then be able to 
" discriminate whether what they had spoken was right or wrong?" 

" Not so, Lord !" was the reply. 

" Should people so speak, Bhikkhus, you should explain any- 
" thing incorrect in what is said as being incorrect, and should say 
" 'This is not correct : this is not so : this exists not among us, is 
" 'not found in us !"' 



230 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS HELD 



2. Asoka's Seventh Edict. 

On Asoka's inscriptions it is sufficient to refer tlio render to 
M. Senart's important work, entitled, Les Inscriptions de 
Piyadasi, where all tho former authorities are quoted. The 
seventh Edict runs as follows : 

"King Piyadasi, heloved of the gods, desires that all the sects 
"should dwell (at liberty) in all places. They all indeed seek 
" (equally) after the subjugation (of one's self) and purity of heart : 
"though tho people are fickle in their aims and fickle in their 
"attachments. They may pursue, either in part or in whole, the 
"aim they set before them. And let every one, whether he receive 
"abundant alms or not, have pelf-control, purity of heart, thankful- 
"ness, and firmness of love. That is always excellent." 

3. Asoka's Twelfth Edict. 

"King Piyadasi, beloved of the gods, honours all sects, both 
"recluses and laymen: he honours them with gifts and with every 
" kind of honour. But the beloved of the gods attaches not so much 
"weight to alms and honours as to (the desire) that the good namo 
"and (the moral virtues which are) the essential part of the teaching 
"of all sects may increase. Now the prosperity of this essential part 
" of the teaching of all the sects (involves), it is true, great diversity. 
"Put this is the one foundation of all, (that is to fay) moderation 
"in speech j that there should be no praising of one's own sect and 
"decrying of other sects ; that there should be no depreciation (of 
"others) without cause, but, on the contrary, a rendering of honour 
"toother sects for whatever cause honour is due. By so doing, 
"both one's own sect will be helped forward, and other sects will 
"be benefited ; by acting otherwise, one's own sect will be destroyed 
"in injuring others. Whosoever exalts his own sect by decrying 
"others, dues so doubtless out of love for his own sect, thinking to 
"spread abroad tire fame thereof. But, on the contrary, he inflicts 
"the more an injury upon his own sect. Therefore is concord the 
'• host, in that all should hear, and love to hear, the doctrines 



BY THE EAELY BUDDHISTS. 



231 



" (Dhamma) of each other. Thus is it the desire of the beloved of 
"the gods that every sect should he well instructed, and should 
" (profess) a religion that is lovely. So that all, whatever their 
"belief, should be persuaded that the beloved of the gods attaches 
"less weight to alms and to honours than to the desire that the 
"good name, and the moral virtues which are the essential part of 
"the teaching of all sects, may increase. To this end do the minis- 
"ters of religion everywhere strive, and the officers placed over 
"women, and the inspectors, and the other officials. And this is 
" the fruit thereof ; namely, the prosperity of his own sect and the 
" exaltation of religion generally." 

There is no record known to me in the whole of the long history 
of Buddhism, throughout the many countries where its followers 
have been for such lengthened periods supreme, of any persecution 
by the Buddhists of the followers of any other frith. 



APPENDIX III. 



PALI TEXT SOCIETY. 

COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT. 

lion. Treasurer— W. W. Hunter, Esq., C.I.E., LL.D. 
Hon. Secretary— U. 15. Brodribb, Esq., B.A., 3, Brick Court, Temple, E.G. 

Professor Fausboll. Dr. Morris. 

Dr. Oldenberg. M. Emile Sknart. 

T. W. Ruts Davids, Chairman. 
( With poicer to add workers to their number.) 

Hankers— Los vox Joint-Stock Bank, Princes Street, E.C. 

A Pali Text Society has been started on the model of the Early- 
English Text Society, in order to render accessible to students the 
rich stores of the earliest Buddhist literature now lying unedited 
and practically unused in the various MSS. scattered throughout 
the Public and University Libraries of Europe. 

The historical importance of these Texts can scarcely be exagge- 
rated, either in respect of their value for the history of folk-lore, or 
of religion, or of language. It is already certain that they were all 
put into their present fonu within a very limited period, probably 
extending to less than a century and a half (about B.C. 400 — 250). 
For that period they have preserved for us a record, quite uncontami- 
nated by any outside influence, of the every-day beliefs and customs 
of a people nearly related to ourselves, just as they were passing 
through the first stages of civilization. They are our best authorities 
for the early history of that interesting system of religion so nearly 
allied to some of the latest speculations among ourselves, aud which 



THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY. 



233 



has influenced so powerfully, and for so long a time, so great a por- 
tion of the human race— -the system of religion which we now call 
Buddhism. And in the history of speech tliey contain unimpeachable 
evidence of a stage in language midway between the Vedic Sanskrit 
and the various modern forms of speech in India. The sacred books 
of the early Buddhists have preserved to us the sole record of the 
only religious movement in the world's history which bears any close 
resemblance to early Christianity ; and it is not too much to say 
that the publication of this unique literature will be no less impor- 
tant for the study of history, and especially of religious history, than 
the publication of the Vedas has already been. 

When we call to mind the passionate patience with which well- 
worn and less important studies are pursued among us, ifc is matter 
for wonder that a nearly unworked mine, where the nuggets of gold 
can still be gathered on the surface, should thus far have remained 
neglected. But there is no endowment of research among us. The 
well-worn studies afford the means of livelihood ; and scholars may 
well be excused for preferring work that brings immediate reward, 
to embarking in difficult and untried undertakings. There has also 
been hitherto a want of reliable MSS. in Europe from which to 
edit Pali texts. But this difficulty is now very nearly overcome ; 
and during the last few years the number of scholars who have 
turned their attention to Bali has considerably increased. 

The Society can now therefore look forward to publishing, within 
a no very distant period, the whole of the texts of the Sutta and 
Abhidhamma Pitakas. Professor Eausbbll having completed the 
Dhammapada, is already far advanced with his edition of the Jataka 
Book, the longest of the texts of the Sutta Pitaka; and Dr. Olden- 
berg has the Vinaya Pitaka well in hand. The remaining texts of 
the Pitakas lend themselves easily to distribution among various 
editors. The project has been most heartily welcomed by scholars 
throughout Europe; and Professor Eausbbll and Dr. Oldenberg 
(when their present undertakings are completed), Dr. Morris, Dr. 
Trenckner, Dr. Thiessen, Dr. Frankfurter, Dr. Hultsch, Professor 
Ernst Ivuhn, Professor Pischel, Dr. Edward Mtiller, Professor Win- 



234 



THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY. 



disch, Professor II. Jacobi, M. Leon Fecr, M. Senart, Professor 
Kern, Professor Lanman, and Mr. Ehys Davids, have already 
pledged tbemselves to take part in the undertaking. 

It is proposed to includo in tlie Society's series those of the more 
important of the earlier Jain and uncanonical Buddhist texts which 
may be expected to throw light on tho religious movement out of 
which the Pitakas also arose. 

Analyses in English of tho published Texts, Introductions to 
them, Catalogues of MSS., Indices, Glossaries, and Notes and 
Queries on early Buddhist History, will appear from timo to time 
in the Society's Journal. 

Later on, tho Society hope also to publish Translations of all 
the texts not elsewhere translated. But tho series of translations 
from the Sacred Books of the East, now being published at Oxford 
under the editorship of Professor Max Mliller, has already found 
room for a version of the greater part of the Vinaya Pitaka, and will 
find room for others. The Society desires to be strictly subservient 
to that series, and will only deal, in the way of translation, with those 
books which do not appear in the Sacred Books of the East. 

The twenty-six books of the Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas are 
written in the Ceylon manuscripts on about 4000 palm-leaves. The 
Vinaya Pitaka, as edited by Dr. Oldenberg, will be printed on about 
1600 pages 8vo, and it occupies about 000 similar palm-leaves. About 
7000 pages 8vo ought therefore to be sufficient for tho whole of tho 
work ; and the cost of printing this quantity of Pali text in Eoman 
characters will be about £1750. 

It is proposed to raise the sum in two ways. In the first place, 
the Subscription to the Society will be OneGuinca a year, or Five 
Guineas for six years, due in advance. No charge will be made for 
postage ; and this payment will entitle the subscriber to a copy of 
all those publications of the Society published during the year for 
which he subscribes. In the second place, it is hoped that persons 
who are desirous to aid the objects of the Society and who do not 
require to receive its publications, will give Donations, to bo 
spread, if necessary, over a term of years. Though the Society 



THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY. 



235 



has only just been started, a very encouraging number of sub- 
scribers have already come forward, including many of the leading 
Orientalists and University Libraries in Europe ; and this number 
will doubtless increase as the Society becomes better known. But 
although enough funds are already in hand to enable the Society 
to go to press with the first volume (which will appear early next 
year), it cannot hope to be able to depend entirely upon subscrip- 
tions. A number of donations, varying in amount from five to a 
hundred pounds, have already been paid or promised ; but about 
£900 more, reckoning each present subscription at ten years' value, 
will be required if the undertaking is to be carried out to a suc- 
cessful accomplishment. Seeing that the distinguished scholars 
whose names appear in the above list are willing to work without 
pecuniary reward of any kind, it would be nothing less than a dis- 
grace if such an object were allowed to fall through, in so wealthy 
a country as England, for so small an amount. 

As the price to non-subscribers will be about double the amount 
of the subscription, all intending subscribers are requested to send 
their subscription at once to the Honorary Secretary, with whom 
intending donors are respectfully urged to communicate without 
delay. Bis dat qui cito dat. 

The following gentlemen have kindly consented to act as agents 

for the receipt of subscriptions : 

Berlin — Professor Oldenbehg (Genthiner Strasse, No. 38). 

Paris — M, E iin est Lkroux (Rue Bonaparte, No. 28). 

Ceylon — E. R. Gun'aratna, Esq. (Attapattu Mudaliyar, Galle). 

Burma — J. A. Bryoe, Esq. (or in his absence, Henry Maxwell, Esq.), Rangoon. 

Siam — Henry Alabaster, Esq., Bangkok. 

America — Professor Lanman, Harvard University. 

The principal contents of the first volume will be selected from 
the Thera- and Theri-gatha by Prof. Oldenberg, the Acaranga 
Sutta by Prof. Jacobi, the Mula- and Khudda-sikkha by Dr. 
Edward Midler, the Dlgha Nik ay a by Dr. Morris and Mr. Rhys 
Davids, and the Anguttara JSTikaya by Dr. Morris. Prof. Win- 
disch has undertaken the Itivuttakarj, Prof. Kern the Jataka- 
mala, and Prof. Lanman the Visuddhi-magga. 



APPENDIX IV. 



References to Eo-birth as an Animal in the Pali Suttas. 

In the Book of tho Great Decease, i. 8, 9, 10, Gotama is said to 
iave described to Ananda a so-called Mirror of Truth, which, if an 
elect disciple possess, ho can predict of himself that re-birth as an 
animal, or as a ghost, or in any place of woe, is rendered impossible 
for him. The Mirror of Truth is consciousness of faitli in tho 
Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sarjgha ; and the whole doctrine is 
allied to the Christian doctrine of the final perseverance of the 
saints. 

The Panca-gatiyo, or Five States into which the unconverted 
man can be re-born, are purgatory, the animal kingdom, and the 
condition of ghosts, gods and men. These Five States are referred 
to in several passages of the Suttas. 

In the first Vagga or Chapter of the Sotapatti-sarjyutta of the 
Sarjyutta Kikaya occurs the following passage : 

"What though a king of kings, Bhikkhus, who has exercised 
"rule and sovereignty over the four continents, on the dissolution 
" of the body, after death, be re-born into a happy state in heaven, 
" into a state of union with the Tavatirjsa Gods. And there, in the 
"Grove of Delight, surrounded by crowds of houris, should pass his 
" time in the possession and enjoyment of the five pleasures of sense. 
" If he be not possessed also of the Four Qualities, he is not set free 
" from (re-birth in) purgatory, or in the animal race, or as a ghost. 
" He is not delivered, I say, from (re-birth in) evil states. 

" And what though a disciple who has entered upon the Excellent 
'• Way (an Ariya-savako) live upon morsels of food and in much 



RE-BIRTH AS AN ANIMAL. 



237 



" poverty. If he be possessed of trie Four Qualities, he is set free 
"from purgatory, and from life as an animal or a ghost. He is set 
"free, I say, from (re-birth in) states of woe. 

" And what are these Four Qualities 1 They are faith in the 
" Buddha, in the Dhamma, and in the Sarjgha, and the practice of 
"those virtues which are unbroken, intact, unspotted, unblemished; 
" which make men free, and are praised by the wise ; which are 
"untarnished (by the desire after a future life, or by a belief in the 
"efficacy of outward acts); and which are conducive to high and 
" holy thoughts." 

The last clause is one of the stock descriptions of the higher life 
of the morality of the Noble Path. Compare the Book of the 
Great Decease, i. 11, above, p. 31. 



APPENDIX V. 



Origen on Metempsychosis. 

I am indebted to my father for the following note on Origin's 
references to Metempsychosis. 

Palladiua of Csesareia, who suffered martyrdom A.D. 309, in Ids 
"Apology for Origen," which, wiih the exception of a few 
fragments, only survives in a translation made by Eufinus of 
Aquilcia (died. A.D. 410), thus explains the position taken up by 
the great Alexandrian upon the subject: 

"The most recent charge is that of fitrtvauifidTuai^ (trans- 
" incorporation), that is, the transmutation of souls. To -which, 
" as we have done with regard to other charges, we will reply in 
" his own words." He then quotes Origen as saying, " But these 
" things, so far as we are concerned, are not dogmata but spoken 
" of for the sake of discussion, and that they may be rejected," 1 



1 E.g. inMigne. Patrol. Graec. xvii. 608, and Routh, Relig. Sacr. iv. 383. 
Tlie passage is probably taken from li is De Principiis, i. 8, in Migne, u.s. xi., 
Ru6nus's translation of which is thus rendered by Dr. Ciombie in the Anti-Nicene 
Christian Library, x. 70 : We think that those views are by no means to be 
"admitted wliich some are wont unnecessarily to advance and maintain, viz. that 
"souls descend to such a pitch of abasement that they forget their rational nature 
"and dignity, and sink into the condition of irrational animals, either large or 
"small; and in support of these assertions they generally quote some pretended 
"statements of Scripture, such as, that a beast, to which a woman has unnaturally 
"prostituted herself, shall be deemed equally guilty with the woman, and shall be 
"ordered to be stoned; or that a bull which strikes with its horns shall be put to 
"death in the same way; or even the speaking of Balaam's ass, when God opened 
"its mouth, and the dumb beast of burden, answering with human voice, reproved 
"the madness of the prophet. All of which assertions we not only do not receive, 
" but, as being contrary to our belief, we refute and reject." The original Greek 



ORIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 



239 



and proceeds to allege four other passages from his writings in 
proof that he really held them to be false. 

1. From Origen's seventh hook on the Gospel according to 
Matthew : " Some, indeed, have been of the opinion that the soul 
"of Elias was the same as that of John, because it is said He is 
"Elias which was to come. For since he said He is Elias, 
"they thought that it could not -be referred to anything else than 
"his soul ; and, from this saying alone almost, they brought in the 
"dogma of fierevcrojfidrwcne, that is, the transmutation of souls, as if 
"Jesus himself were confirming this. But it ought to have been 
"seen that, if this were true, something similar should be found 
"in many writings of the Prophets and the Gospels as well. . . . . 
" It should be added that, according to what they think, the trans- 
" mutation of souls takes place because of sins ; for what sins was 
" the soul of Elias transmuted into John, whose birth was predicted 
"by the very angel by whom that of Jesus was? How then is it 
"uot most evidently false, that he who was so perfect as not 
"to even taste that death which is common to all, should come 
" to a transmutation of soul, which according to their allegation 
" cannot take place except because of sins 2" 1 

2. From the eleventh book of the same work, where Origen 
alleges that the opinion that " souls are passed over from human 
" bodies into the bodies of animals," to be that of those who are 
" strangers to the catholic faith," and explains his own to be, 
" that as it is the virtue of the mind that bestows on any man 
" that he may become a son of God, so it is evilness of mind 
" . . . . that, according to the authority of Scripture, makes any 



isgiven by Migne (u.s.) from a letter addresssd by the Emperor Justinian to Menas, 
Patriarch of Constantinople, A.D. 536 — 552. Eufinus, as usual, translates with 
great freedom. 

It is to this passage in the De Principiis that Jerome refers in his letter to 
Avitus (Ep. 124, al. 59, c. i. s.f. in Migne, Patrol. Lat. xxii. 1063), where he 
quotes Origen much as ralladins has done according to Kufinus. The date of the 
letter is c. A.D. 410. 

1 C.x. in Migne, u.s. 609. This passage only survives in the translation of 
Rufinus. 



210 



ORTGEX ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 



" one to be called a dog and that "in like manner are the desig- 
" nations of other dumb animals to be understood." 1 

3. From the thirteenth book of the same work, where, speaking 
again of the case of Elias, Origen repeats Ins denunciation of the 
dogma of the "transmutation of souls," and describes it as 
" unknown to the Church of God, and one that neither was 
" delivered by an apostle nor anywhere appears in the Scriptures." 
When commenting upon the saying, He shall go before him in 
t lie spirit of Elias, and contending that it was not said in the 
soul of Elias in order " that nt-tvoioj.ta.7woi<; should have no place." 2 

1 The original Greek is given in Migne, u. s. xiii. 963, and Routh, u.s. iv. 384. 
Tertullian discusses the same subject at great length, De Anima, c. 32 : "Now 
"our position is this, that the human soul cannot by any means at all be trans- 
ferred to beasts, even when they are supposed to originate, according to the 
"philosophers, out of the substances of the elements. Now let us suppose that the 
"soul is either fire, or water, or blood, or spirit, or air, or light ; we must not forget 
"that all the animals in their several kinds have properties which are opposed to 
"the respective elements. There are the cold animals which are opposed to fire. 
". . . . In like manner, those creatures are opposite to water which are in their 

"nature dry and sapless So, again, some such creatures are opposed to 

" blood which have none of its purple hue Then opposed to spirit are those 

"creatures which seem to have no respiration Opposed, moreover, to air 

"are those creatures which always live under ground and under water and never 

" imbibe air Then opposed to light are those things which are either wholly 

" blind, or possess eyes for the darkness only I maintain that, of which- 
soever of the before-mentioned natures the human soul is composed, it would not 
"have been possible for it to pass for new forms into animals so contrary to each 
"of the separate natures, and to bestow an origin by its passage on these beings, 
"from which it would have to be excluded and rejected rather than to be admitted 
"and received, by reason of that original contrariety which we have supposed it to 
"possess; .... and then, again, by reason of the subsequent contrariety, which 
"results from the developement inseparable from each several nature." 

After some further argument in a similar strain, he concludes by saying: ". ... 
"although some men are compared to the beasts because of their character, dis- 
position and pursuits it does not on this account follow that rapacious 

" persons become kites, lewd persons dogs, ill-tempered ones panthers, good men 
"sheep, talkative ones swallows, and chaste men doves, as if the self-same sub- 
stance of the soul everywhere repeated its own nature in the properties of the 
"animals (into which it passed)." Dr. Holms' Transl. Anti-Nicene Chris- 
tian Library, xv. 485 — 487. Tertullian continues the discussion in the fol- 
lowing chapter. 

- The original Greek is given by Migne, u.s. xiii. 1091. Either Palladius or 
Tlufinus only give the substance of the passage. Tertullian ascribes the use of the 



ORIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 



241 



4. From his book on the Proverbs : " The assertion that souls 
" are transformed from bodies into other bodies seems to have 
" occurred to some of those also who appear to believe in Christ, 
" in consequence of some passages of sacred Scriptures, they not 
'•' understanding what is written. For they do not observe how a 
" man may become or made a chicken, or a horse, or a mule, and 
" they thought that the human soul is transmuted into the bodies 
" of cattle, just as they thought that it sometimes assumed the body 
" of a viper." The passage now becomes obscure, but the meaning 
would appear to be, that this took place just as the devil took the 
form of a serpent, "which if they say, they ought also to say that 
" he sometimes takes that of a dragon or a lion." 1 



argument derived from the case of EHas to the followers of Carpoerates: ". . . . 
"whom they so assume to have been reproduced in John as to make our Lord's 
"statement sponsor for their theory of transmigration when he said, Elias is 
"come already, and they knew him not; and again, in another passage, 
"And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come. 
"Well, then, was it really in a Pythagorean sense that the Jews approached John 
"with the inquiry, Art thou Elias? and not rather in the sense of the Divine 
"prediction, Behold, I will send you Elijah the Tisbite? The fact, 
"however, is, that their metempsychosis or tiansmigration theory signifies the 
"recall of the soul which had died long before, and its return to some other body. 
"But Elias is to come again, not after quitting life (in the way of dying), but after 
"his translation (or removal without dying) ; not for the purpose of being restored 
"to the body, from which he had not departed, but for the purpose of revisiting 
"the world from which he was translated ; not by way of resuming a life which he 

"had laid aside, but of fulfilling prophecy How, therefore, could John be 

"Elias? You have your answer in the angel's announcement, And he shall go 
"before the people, says he, in the spirit and power of Elias, — not 
"(observe) in his soul and in his body. These substances are, in fact, the natural 
"property of each individual; whilst the spirit and power are bestowed as 
"external gifts by the grace of God, and so may be transferred to another person 
"according to the purpose and will of the Almighty." .... Of the Soul, u.s. 
496, 497. 

1 Migne, u.s. 613. This passage also only survives in the translation of Rufinus. 
In the De Principiis, Origen comments on one of these passages, 1 Cor. xv. 28, 
as follows : "Since, then, it is promised that in the end God will be all in all, 
"men are not to suppose that animals, either sheap or other cattle, come to that 
''end, lest it should be implied that God dwelt even in animals, whether sheep 
"or other cattle; and so, too, with pieces of wood or stones, lest it should be said 

"that God is in these also Let us then inquire what all those things are 

"which God is to become in all. I am of the opinion that the expression, by which 

R 



242 



ORIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 



Tlic following passage from Palladius himself on a cognate 
subject may not be without interest : " Some think that bodies 
"having been prepared and formed in the womb of women, tunc ad 
"prsesein, then immediately souls are created and inserted in Uio 
"already formed body; not to say that this cannot be proved from 
"Scripture — tliose who luld it do in measure accuse the right cous- 
"ness of the Creator, because he does not equally assign to all that 
"is like surroundings of life (rcquas vitac conversationes). For 
"immediately that the soul was created, when as yet it had com- 
"mitted no fault, it is inserted, if it so happened, into a blind 
"body, or one that was otherwise weak; some, moreover (are in- 
" sorted) into healthy bodies, and others into more delicate ones. 
"To some also long time of life is assigned, to others a very shoit 
"one, so that sometimes as soon as they were born they were 
"expelled from the body; and some, moreover, are led into rude 
" and barbarous surroundings, and where there is nothing human 
"or honourable, and where an impious parental training is supreme. 
" Some, however, are handed over to honourable men, sober, human, 
"and where the observation of human laws flourishes; sometimes, 
"too, to religious parents, where they (have) a noble and an honour- 
able education and reasonable instruction. 



"God is said to be all in all, means that He is all in each individual person. 
"Now He will be all in each individual in this way, when all with any rational 
"understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud 
"of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will 
"be wholly God; and when it will no longer behold or retain anything else than 
"God, but when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements; and 
"thus God will be all, for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil, 
"seeing evil nowhere exists ; for God is all things, and to Him no evil is near ; nor 
" will there be any longing or desire to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good 
"and evil, on the part of him who is always in the possession of good, and to whom 
"God is all. So, then, when the end has been restored to the beginning, and the 
"termination of things compared with their commencement, that condition of things 
"will be re-establisbed in which rational nature was placed, when it had no need 
"to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ; so that when all feeling of 
" wickedness has been removed, and the individual has been purified and cleansed, 
"He who alone is the one good God becomes to him all, and that not in the case 
" of a few individunls, or of a considerable number, but He Himself is all in all." 
Auti-Kicene Christian Library x 2(J4, 266; Migne, u. s. xi. 335 et seq. 



OPJGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 



243 



" Then stronger objection still lies by the opinion that souls are 
" the insufflation of the Spirit of God, because it is the substance of 
" God that sins, if the soul, which is the substance of God, sins ; 
" besides it will be subject to punishment for sin. And if the soul 

"is created simultaneously with body, it must die so too 

"If, like other animalia, men spring from seed only, so that tho 
"soul is diffused with the same seed, what shall we say of the 
" deformed and of abortions 1 . . . . All souls are of one substance, 
"and are immortal and rationable, (endowed with) free-will and 
" choice ; that they are to be judged for what they did in this life ; 
" and that they were made by God, who established and created all 
" tilings. But when they were made, what danger is there in tho 
"opinion that it was all at once of old, or by one by one now 1 ?" 1 



1 Apolog. for Orig. in Migne, u. s. xvii. 604. = Tertullian, De Anima, c. iv.; 
Anti-Nicene Library, u.s. 418, c. xxv. ib. 468. 



ft 2 



APPENDIX VL 



Leibnitz and Lessing on Transmigration. 

In liis Syslemc Nouveau de la Nature, 1 Leibnitz discusses 
the possibility of lift; before birth and after death, and says inter 
alia : 

" § G Dos plus excellents observatcurs de notre terns sont 

"venues a nion secours, et m'ont fait admettre plus aise men t que 
"l'animal, et toute autre substance organised, ne commence point 
" lorque nous le croyons, et que sa generation apparente n'est qu'im 

" ddvelopenient, et une espece d'augmentation § 7. Ainsi n'y 

"a-t-il personoe qui puisse bien marquer le veritable terns de la 
"moit, laquelle peut passer long-tems pour une simple suspension 
"des actions notables, et dans le fond n'est jamais autre chose dans 

"les simples animanx : temoin les lessuscitations II est done 

"naturel que l'animal ayant toujours etc vivant et organise, il le 
"demeure aussi toujours. Et puis qu'ainsi il n'y a point de premiere 
"naissance ni de generation entierement nouvclle de l'animal, il 
"s'ensuit qu'il n'y en aura point d'extiiiction finale, ni de mort enticre 
" prise a la rigueur metaphysique ; et par consequant au lieu de la 
"transmigration des ames, il n'y a qu'une transformation d'un mcme 
"animal, selon que les organes sont plies differemment, et plus ou 
" moins developes." 

And then further on, in § 9, he quotes with approval "l'ancien 
" auteur du livre de la Diete qu'on attribue a Hippocrate, 

1 Journal des Savans, 27 Juin, 1695. Reprinted in Leibn. Opp. ed. 
Dutens, Vol. ii. Pt. L p. 49, and in Leibn. Opp. Phit ed. Eidmann, Pt. i. 

r. i-:l 



LEIBNITZ AND LESSING ON TRANSMIGRATION. 245 

"que les animaux ne nourrent et ne meurent point, et que les choses 
"qu'on croit commencer etperir, ne font que paroitre et disparoitre.' 

Leibnitz therefore, like Gotama, rejects transmigration only to 
adopt a theory which allows of pre-existence, and of a connection of 
cause and effect between different individuals. And in Lessing's 
opinion, as in Gotama's, there is a law of nature which involves 
continuity of being between different individuals. I only know 
his theory, which is contained in a rare tract entitled " Dass meni- 
als fiinf Sinne fiir den menschen sein kbnnen," from the 
summary given by Professor Goldstiicker in his article on Trans- 
migration, contributed to Knight's Encyclop aedia Metropo- 
litana, and reprinted in the Literary Eemains of Theodor 
Goldstiicker, p. 218. He there says : 

" His arguments are briefly these : The soul is a simple being, 
" capable of' infinite conceptions. But being a finite being, it is 
" not capable of such infinite conceptions at the same time. It 
" must obtain them gradually in an infinite succession of time. If, 
" however, it obtain them gradually, there must be an older in 
" which and a degree to which these conceptions are acquired. 
" This order and this measure are the senses. At present the soul 
" has of senses five. But neither is there any ground to assume 
" that it has commenced with having five senses, nor that it will 
" stop there. Eor since nature never takes a leap, the soul must 
" have gone through all the lower stages before it arrived at that 
" which it occupies now. And since nature contains many 
" substances and powers which are not accessible to those senses 
" with which it is now endowed, it must be assumed that there 
" will be future stages, at which the soul will have as many senses 
" as correspond with the powers of nature. And this my system" — 
Lessing concludes his essay in a fragmentary note discovered after 
his death — " this my system is certainly the oldest of all philo- 
" sophical systems. For it is, in reality, no other than the system 
" of the pre-existence of the soul and metempsychosis, which did 
" not only occupy the speculation of Phythagoras and Plato, but 
" also before them of Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Persians — in short, 



246 LEIBNITZ AND LESSING ON TRANSMIGRATION. 



" of all the sages of the East. And this circumstance alone 
" ouglit to work a prejudice in its favour. For tho first and oldest 
" opinion is, in matters of speculation, always the most prohahle, 
" because common sense immediately hit upon it." 



APPENDIX VII. 



On Souls going to the Moon. 

On the curious belief mentioned above, p. 82, of souls going to 
the moon, Mr. Tylor says, in his Primitive Culture, ii. 69, 70 : 

"Fourthly, in old times and new, it has come into men's minds 
"to fix upon the sun and moon as abodes of departed souls. When 
"we have learnt from the rude Natchez of the Mississippi and the 
"Apalaches of Florida that the sun is the bright dwelling of de- 
parted chiefs and braves, and have traced like thoughts on into 
"the theologies of Mexico and Peru, then we may compare these 
"savage doctrines with Isaac Taylor's ingenious supposition, in his 
"Physical Theory of Another Life, that the sun of each pla- 
"netary system is the house of the higher and ultimate spiritual 
"corporeity, in the centre of assembly to those who have passed on 
" the planets their preliminary era of corruptible organization. Or 
"perhaps some may prefer the Eev. Tobias Swinden's book, pub- 
"lished in the last century, and translated into French and German, 
"which proved the sun to be hell, and its dark spots gatherings of 
" damned souls. And when in South America the Saliva Indians 
" have pointed out the moon as their paradise, where no moscruitos 
" are, and the Guaycurus have shown it as the home of chiefs and 
" medicine-men deceased, and the Polynesians of Tokelan, in like 
"manner, have claimed it as the abode of departed kings and chiefs, 
"then these pleasant fancies may be compared with that ancient 
"theory mentioned by Plutarch, that hell is in the air and elysium 
"in the moon; and again, with the mediaeval conception of the 



•J IS 



ON SOULS GOING TO THE MOON. 



"moon as the scat of hell, 1 a thought elaborated in profoundest 
"bathos by Mr. M. F. Tapper : 

" ' I know thee well, Moon, thou cavcrn'd realm, 
Sail Satellite, thou giant ash of death, 
Blot on Cod's firmament, pale home of crime, 
Scavr'd prison-house of sin, where damned souls 
Feed upon punishment. Oh, thought sublime, 
That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls 
Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners well, 
Glarcst o'er all, the wakeful eye of— Hell !'" 

Skin for skin, the brown savage is not ill matched in such specu- 
lative lore with the white philosopher. 

The Manicheans had a belief which it would be well to compare 
with the above. So Epiphanius (Adv. Hair. 6G) gives the following 
as the views of Tyrbo : 

"The wisdom of the more than good God, bethinking itself that 
"the soul diffused through everything, being captive of the princes 
"and opposite principle and root, was cast into bodies — for its sake 2 
". .. . placed these lights in the heavens, the Sun, the Moon,, 
"and the Stars — having performed this work by what the Greeks 
"say arc the twelve elements. And the elements, he (i.e. Tyrbo) 
"maintains, draw the souls of dying men and other animals, they 
"being of the nature of light, bear them to a light boat (because he 
"wishes to call the sun and moon voyages), and the light boat, or 
"ship, is laden up to the fifteenth day, according to the fulness of 
" the moon, and so it (the soul) is sent on and set down from the 
"fifteenth day in the great ship, that is the sun. The sun then 
" carries them on into the world of life and the region of the blessed. 
"And thus souls are sent on by the sun and the moon." 

And this is confirmed, though with some difference in detail, by 
the Disputaton of Archelaus, where it is said of the doctrine 
of Manes : 



1 See Alger, Future Life, p. 590. 

2 The Manicheans hold the soul to be a part of God (as the Stoics did). 



ON SOUL GOING TO THE MOON. 



249 



"When the living Father perceived that the soul was in tribula- 
'tion in the hody, He sent his own Son for (its) salvation. Then 
1 He came and prepared the work which was to effect the salvation 
' of the sonls, and with that object prepared an instrument with 
'twelve urns (mdovg), which is made to revolve with the sphere, 
'and draws up with it the souls of the dying. And the greater 
' luminary receives those souls, and purifies them with its rays, and 
' then passes them over to the moon, and in this manner the moon's 
'disc, as it is designated by us, is filled up. For he (i.e. Manes) 
' says that these two luminaries are ships or passage boats (irtHpO/ju'ia). 
' Then, if the moon becomes full, it ferries its passengers across 
'towards the E. wind, and thereby effects its own waning in getting 
'itself delivered of its freight. And in this manner it goes on 
'making the passage across, and again discharging its freight of 
' souls drawn up by the urns, until it saves its own proper portion 
' of the souls. 

" Moreover, he (Manes) maintains that every soul, yea, every 
' living creature, partakes of the substance of the good Father. And 
'accordingly, when the moon delivers over its freight of souls to 
'the aeons of the Father, they abide there in that pillar of glory 
' which is called the perfect air. And this air is a pillar of light, 
' for it is filled in the souls that are being purified." 



APPENDIX VIH 



Plato on the Soul. 

As this volume is likely to fall into the hands of readers in the 
East who may not he ahlc to refer to the passage for themselves, I 
here add the context of the passage quoted ahovc, pp. 95 — 1)7, from 
the Plised" : 

"And this is the reason .... why the true votaries of philosophy 
"ahstain from all fleshly lusts, and endure and refuse to give them- 
" selves up to them, — not because they fear poverty or the ruin of 
" their families, like the lovers of money and the world in general ; 
" nor like the lovers of power and honour, because they dread the 

"dishonour or disgrace of evil deeds Therefore they who have 

"any care of their own souls, and do not merely live moulding and 
" fashioning the body, say farewell to all this, they will not walk 
"in the ways of the blind; and when philosophy offers them 
" purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not to 
"resist her influence, and whither she leads they turn and follow. 

". . . . The lovers of knowledge are conscious that their souls, 
"when philosophy takes them in hand, arc simply fastened and 
"glued to their bodies • the soul is able to view real existence only 
"through the bars of a prison, and not of herself unhindered; she 
"is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance ; and philosophy, behold- 
"ing the terrible nature of her confinement, inasmuch as the captive 
"through lust becomes a chief accomplice in her own captivity, — 
"for the lovers of knowledge are aware that this was the original 
"state of the soul, but that when she was in this state philosophy 
"adopted and comforted her, and wanted to release her, pointing 



PLATO ON THE SOUL. 



251 



" out to her that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full 
"of deceit, and persuading her to retire from them in all but the 
" necessary use of them, and to be gathered up and collected into 
"herself, and to trust only to herself and her own pure apprehensions 
" of pure existence, and to mistrust whatever comes to her through 
"other channels and is subject to vicissitude, — philosophy, I say, 
"shows her that all her own nature is intellectual and invisible. 
" And the soul of the true philosopher thinks that she ought not to 
"resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains from pleasures and 
" desires and pains and fears, as far as she is able ; reflecting that 
" when a man has great joys or sorrows or fears or desires, he suffers 
"from them, not merely the sort of evil which might be anticipated, 
" — as, for example, the laws of his health or property, which he 
" has sacrificed to his lusts, — but an evil greater far, which is the 
"greatest and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks. 
"And what it that, Socrates? said Cebes. 

"Why, that when the feeling of pleasure and pain in the soul is 
"most intense, all of us naturally suppose that the object of this 
" intense feeling is then plainest and truest ; but such is not the 

" case And this is the state in which the soul is most en- 

" thralled by the body 1 .... because each pleasure and pain is a 
"sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she 
"becomes like the body, and believes that to be true which the 
"body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body and 
"having the same delights, she is obliged to have the same habits 

" and haunts,, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure 

" but is always impeded by the body ; and so she sinks into another 
"body and there germinates and grows." 



Rep. x. : Jowett, ill. 51G seq. 



APPENDIX IX. 



Further Nota on the word Pitaka. 

In connection with the remark on p. 49, as to tho use of the 
word Pitaka, or Basket, for the Buddhist canon, it has heen pointed 
out to me that Epiphaniua of Salamis, the well-known Haeresiologist 
of the fourth century, entitled his great work Uavc'ipiov, which is 
the Latin pannarium, originally used of a bread-basket, whence 
our English pannier. He, however, explains the sense in which 
ho used the word by the addition, " sive capsulam medicura." The 
parallel is curious and perhaps suggestive. 

Schlagintwcit informs us, in his Buddhism in Tibet (pp. 97, 98) 
that an image of one of the Buddhist Upasakas, put up in the mo- 
nastery of Gyungul, "carries a basket filled with the sheets of a 

" religious book This very ancient mode of using a basket for 

"the palni-leaves .... is said to be stdl in use in Tibet, the single 
" volumes of larger works being put together into a common basket." 
No information is given as to the age of the image, but it is certainly 
very late, perhaps a century or so old. I only quote the passage as 
evidence of modern Tibetan ideas on the subject. 



APPENDIX. X 



Nirvana. 



When, in writing my manual of Buddhism, I was endeavouring 
to reconcile the apparently discrepant descriptions of Nirvana which 
had led some scholars to the conclusion that it meant the annihi- 
lation of heing or the annihilation of the soul, and others to the 
contrary conclusion, that it meant the eternal existence of the soul 
in a state of bliss, and was gradually led to the startling conclusion 
that Gotama, in his description of Nirvana, was expressing no opi- 
nion at all, either one way or the other, as to existence after death, 
but was proclaiming a salvation from the sorrows of life which was 
to be reached here on earth in a changed state of mind, I saw 
indeed that this explanation would remove all the previous difficul- 
ties in the passages then before me, but I little thought that further 
research in the Pali Scriptures would disclose any passages in which 
the misunderstandings of European investigators would be clearly 
and authoritatively met. This has, however, been the case. Every 
day, as new portions of the Pali Pilakas are being made accessible, 
fresh confirmation is being afforded to the truth of the view I had 
ventured to put forward, and Dr. Frankfurter has been the first to 
point out three important passages in the Sarjyutta Nikaya which 
would be decisive on the point if it were still open to doubt. In 
two of these passages Sariputtn, and in the third Gotama himself, 
are represented as stating, in answer to a direct question what Nir- 
vana is, that it is the destruction of passion, malice, and delusion 
(raga, dosa, and moha). The context may be seen in Dr. Frank- 
furter's paper in the Journal of the Eoyal Asiatic Society 
for 1880, in which the full Pali texts are given, with summarized 
translations and notes. 



APPENDIX XL 



The Key-note of the " Great Vehicle." 

Had I hail time for another Lecture, I should have been glad of 
the opportunity of enlarging further on the idea of a desire to 
save all living creatures, quoted above, p. 112, from the 
Sutra of the 42 Sections. 

It is acknowledged that the Great Vehicle, the Mahay ana, 
entirely supplanted in Northern India the older Buddhism of the 
Little Vehicle, the Hlnayana. "What was it that gave to the later 
movement that superior vital power -which enabled it to outlive the 
earlier teaching'? Mr. Beal, in the Introduction to his Travels 
of Fa Hian, pp. lvii and foil., places the distinguishing charac- 
teristics of the newer school in certain metaphysical subtleties which 
could scarcely have gained for it the ear of the multitude. I venture 
to think that the idea referred to above, as summarized in the theory 
of Bodisatship, is the key-note of the later school, just as Ara- 
hatship is the key-note of early Buddhism. The Mahayana doctors 
said, in effect : ""We grant you all you say about the bliss of atlain- 
" ing Nirvana in this life. But it produces advantage only to your- 
" selves ; and according to your own theory there will be a necessity 
" for Buddhas in the future as much as there has been for Buddhas 
"in the past. Greater, better, nobler, then, than the attainment oi 
"Arahatship, must be the attainment of Bodisatship from a desire 
"to save all living creatures in the ages that will come." 

The new teaching, therefore, was in no conscious contradiction to 
the old ; it accepted it all, and was based upon it. Its distinguish- 
ing characteristic was the great stress which it laid on one point of 



THE KEY-NOTE OF THE " GREAT VEHICLE," 255 



the earlier doctrine to the gradual overshadowing of the rest. Its 
strength lay in the grandeur of its appeal to self-renunciation. It is 
true the newer school unconsciously changed the centre point of tiro 
system, the focus of their mental vision ; and the logical consequences 
of the step they had taken led to the corruption of Buddhism. They 
might have heen wiser had they perceived that their duty to the 
race would have been more completely fulfilled by their acting up 
to the ideal of Arahatship. But it was at least no slight merit to 
have been led, even though they were led astray, by a sense of duty 
to the race. And readers of the Mahayana books, tedious as they 
have so often been called, will find them acquire a new significance 
and a new beauty when they are read in the light of this conception. 



The pronunciation of Pali words is exceedingly easy. The vowels 
have always the same sound as in Italian or German (except that 
unaccented short a is pronounced as u in hut), and the consonants 
the same as in English (except that c = ch, n = ny, and n = ng). 
The dotted t, cl, n, are the same as in English j but the simple d, t, n, 
are pure dentals, — that is, they are pronounced with the tongue 
against the teeth. The accent is always on the long syllable. Eor 
further details, see my manual, Buddhism, p. v. 



Abhidhamma, does not mean 
metaphysics, 49. 

Acosta, Jesuit father, his expla- 
nation of Mexican ritual, 3. 

Addhariya Brahmans, 57. 

Adi-brah macariyan, 35. 

Agnostic, Gotama not an, 90, 

Alger's " Future Life," 79, 248. 

"Alice in Wonderland" quoted, 
101. 

Amata, name of Nirvana, 137. 

Ananda, the beloved disciple, 180. 

Anatta-safma, 208. 

Anicca-sarma, 208. 

Angnttara Mkaya, 45—47. 

Animism, 13, 30, 74, 146. De- 
tails of, as .condemned in Bud- 
dhism, 67, 68. 

Aparamattha, untarnished (vir- 
tue), 102. 



Arahatship, 99, 100, 102, 103, 
107, 121, 137, 207, 254. 

Arnold, Edwin, his "Light of 
"Asia," 140. 

Aryan races, early beliefs of, 13. 
Did not include transmigra- 
tion, 74. 

Asoka's Edicts, 3. 

Assalayana Sutta summarized, 
51—55. 

Atharva Yeda, use of, 15. 

Attavada, 208. 

Bavari, an aged Brahman, 171 — 
173. 

Beal, Bev. Samuel, 112, 200, 204. 
Bhandagama, a village, 99. 
Bharadvaja, a Brahman, 56 — 59. 
Bigandet, Bishop, quoted, 150. 
Brahma = God, 58, 64, 138. 

S 



258 



INDEX. 



Brahmacariya Brahmans, 57. 
Biahmajala Sutta quoted, 205, 

229. 
Brahmans, 23. 

Brahmanas, the, caste teaching 
in, 23. Future life in, 81. 

Buckle quoted, 21. 

Buddha, a description of, 57, G3, 
64,142. The,idealof,141— 151. 

Buddhas, theory of, Jain and 
Buddhist, 27. 

Buddha-gaya, 127. 

Bunsen, Ernest de, quoted, 151. 

Burmese Buddhism, 150. 

Cariya Pitaka, doctrine of Karma 

in the, 107. 
Carlyle, 135, 110. 
Caste, Hindu notion of, discussed, 

22 — 25. Buddlust view as to, 

51—55 
Catholic beliefs, G, 7. 
Cetokhila Sutta quoted, 103. 
Ceylonese Buddhism, 150. 
Chakka-vatti, the ideal king of 

kings, 130—140. 
Chandava Brahmans, 57. 
Chaiidoka Bralimans, 57. 
Chandagutta, first king of India, 

130. 
Charms, 2G. 

Childers, Professor, 166. 
Chinese Buddlust hooks, 199 — 
204. 

Clement of Alexandria, his me- 
thod of comparative inquiry, 3. 

Commandments, the Buddhist 
Ten, 66, 67. 

Comparative mythology, methods 
of, 9. 



Comparative philology, methods 
of, 5, 9. 

Comparative study of religious 
beliefs, right and wrong uses 
of, 1—10. 

Comtism compared to L'uddhism, 
31. 

" Confections," 101. 
Confucius, 21, 123. 
Conuuhium in ancient India, 23. 
Cust's "Linguistic, &c, Essays" 

quoted, 125. 
Cycles of improvement and decay, 

111. 

Datha-vansa quoted, 150. 
Desire, Buddhism does not teach 

the abandonment of, 207. 
Despair of life in India, 21. 
Devayana in Buddhism, 106. 
Dhamma, the Buddhist literature 

of, 44—50. 
Dhammapada quoted, 163 — 165. 
Dlgha-bhanaka, 49. 
Digha Nikaya, 45. 
Dlpavarjsa quoted, 126. 
Disputation of Archelaus, 254. 
Ditthi, the term explained, 155. 
Dods, Dr., quoted, 109. 

Egyptian ideas allied to transmi- 
gration, 75. 

Elephant, the mystic Treasure of, 
132. 

Eliot, George, quoted, 110. 
Emerson quoted, 114. 
Epic of Humanity, 217. 
Epiphanius of Salamis, 250, 252. 
Exoteric and esoteric doctrines, 
181. 



INDEX. 



259 



Faith, reason, and works, 180. 
Fa Khieu Pi Hu, a Chinese book, 

199—202. 
Fate, Greek and Muhammadan, 

113. 

Figuier's "Le Lendemain de la 
Mort," 80. 

Foreknowledge, 113. 

Foucaux, M., quoted, 112, 197. 

Future life, belief in, in the Vedic 
times, 15, 16. Among the 
Jews, 16,80. None in Bud- 
dhism, 109. Buddhist substi- 
tute for, 214, 215. 

Gibbon quoted, 168. 

Gotama, the Buddha, sketch of 

life of, 126, 127. Of Alavi, 

173. 

Greg, " Enigmas of Life," quoted, 
163. 

Heaven, hope of, in Buddhism, 

104, 105. 
Hereditary occupations, 24. 

Priesthoods, 24. 
Hinayana. See Vehicle. 
Hiuen Thsang, 198. 
Horoscopes, 26. 
Horse, the mystic white, 132. 
House of Commons, speech in, 

1530, 5. 
Hume, David, 125, 155. 
"Hymns Ancient and Modern," 

140. 

Iddhis, the four, 134. 
Impermaneney, doctrine of, 211. 
Immutability of Bomanism and 

Buddhism, 190. 
Indra, a god, 61. 



Insight, foundation of goodness, 
209. 

Intoning of hymns, 25. 
Isana, a god, 61. 

Jacobi, Professor, 27. 
Jagan-n a t h as Buddh a andVishnu, 
33. 

Jains, their theory of the Bud- 

dhas, 27. 
Jataka stories, re-birth in the, 

108. Quoted, 116—121. 
Jerome, St., quoted, 169. 
Jewels of the Law, the seven, 

205. 

Jewish belief in transmigration, 
78. 

Johnson's Oriental Eeligions 

quoted, 7. 
Justification by faith, 209. 

Kammavacas, 38 — 40. 
Kanishka, king of North India, 
197. 

Kapila's school of philosophy, 27. 

Kapila-vatthu, Gotama's birth- 
place, 126. 

Kappas, ages, 211. 

Karma, Buddhist theory of, 92— 
94, 115. 

Kassapa of Uruvela, his conver- 
sion, 158, 159. 

Khandhakas of the Yin ay a, 42. 
Translation of, 44. 

Khattiya, the second caste, 53. 

King of Bighteousness, 129 — 
149. 

Kingsborongh, Lord, his Anti- 
quities of Mexico quoted, 3. 
Kisl-gotami, her song, 160. 



260 



[NDEX. 



Knowledge, the foundation of 
religion, in the Upanishads 
and in Buddhism, 28, 29, 209, 
210. 

Koliyans, clan of, 126. 
Kb'ppen's "Geschithte des Bud- 

dhismus," 150. 
Kshatriya, the second caste, 24. 
Kusi-nagaia, where Gotaraa died, 

127. 

Lalita Vistara, its value as evi- 
dence of early Buddhism, 197. 
Its date, 198—204. 

Legge,Dr., his Religions of China 
quoted, 8. • 

Liverpool Free Lihrary,PiIli MSS. 
in, 38. 

Logos, ideal of, compared with 
that of the Buddha, 143—151. 

Loka-natha, .epithet of the Bud- 
dha, 33. 

Love, universal, in Buddhism, 

29, 110—112. 
Lucretius quoted, 165. 

Magga-hrahma-caiiyarj, 55. 
Mahaparinibbana Sutta quoted, 

29, 100, 106, 150, 206. 
Mahavagga quoted, 145, 159. 
Mahay an a. Sec Vehicle. 
Mahiddhi, a god, 61. 
Majjhima 2\ikaya, 45. 
Mara, the Evil Spirit, 138, 144, 

149. 

Manicheans, curious doctrine of, 
248. 

Manasakata, a village, 56. 
Messiah, ideal of, compared with 

Cakka-vatti, 135—138. 
Metta Sutta quoted, 111. 



Mexican ritual, 3. 

Monotheism, its relation to Poly- 
theism, 30. 

Monotlieists, were the Jews so? 
19. 

Moritalembert's " Monks of the 

West," 168. 
Muir's Sanskrit texts quoted, 16. 

Nepalcse Buddhism, 142. 

Nikayas, the five, 45. 

Nirvana, its analogue in Western 
thought, 31. Its meaning in 
Buddhism, 100, 161. Attain- 
ment of, difficult, 162. No- 
thing less than to be desired, 
176. Note on, 253. 

Noble Path, the so-called, 55, 
205. 

Northern Buddhism, an incorrect 

term, 189. 
Numbers, Christian, Buddhist, 

and Pythagorean, 47. 

Order, the Buddhist, forms in 
use in, 38— 40. Pules of, 41— 
44. Beginnings of the history 
of, 156. Early spirit of, 170. 
Conditions of the welfare of, 
174—180. 

Origen on transmigration, 79, 
238—243. 

Pacceka-Buddhas, the term ex- 
plained, 146. 

Pajapati, a god, 61. 

Pali Text Society, 71, 232—235. 

Pancagatiyo, 239. 

Pafleavaggiya ascetics, 144. 

Pantheism, Greek, Indian, and 
modern, 19 — 21. 



INDEX. 



2G1 



Parivara-patha, appendix to the 

Vinay a, 42, 
Patimokkha, a list of offences, 

41, 42. Translation of, 44. 
Pavarana, festival, 41. 
Peace, the Buddhist longing after, 

158—163. 
Pessimism, 22. 

Pingiya,an aged Brahman, 171 — 
173. 

Pischel's "Assalayana Sutta," 51. 

Pitaka, a later name of the 
Buddhist Scriptures, 49, 252. 

Plato on the soul, 95, 98, 250. 

Polytheism grew out of Ani- 
mism, 14, 30. 

Predestination, 113, 114. 

Pre-existence, 115. 

Prayer, ancient Indian view of, 
25. No prayer in Buddhism, 41. 

Purgatory, Catholic and Bud- 
dhist, 105. 

Purity, superstitions regarding, 
24. 

Pythagoras, 47, 75, 123. 

Pace, duty to the, 110. 
Rajanyas, the second caste, 23. 
Eajendra Lai Mitra, 199. 
Eapti, a river, 56, 60. 
Re-birth as an animal, 105 — 109, 

239, 240. 
Religious liberty as held by the 

early Buddhists, 229—231. 
Renunciation, 139, 167. 
Rig Veda, records an advanced 

stage in religious belief, 13. 

Is not a complete record of 

early Indian religious beliefs, 

14, 15. 



Rishis, the authors of theVedas, 
58, 142. 

Sabbasawa Sutta quoted, 88, 89. 
Sak} r a clan, 126. 
Samadhi, 180. 

Samma-sambuddha, meaning of, 

16, 145—147. 

Sangha. See Order, the Buddhist. 
Saukharas, 101. 

Sankhya, or numeral philosophy, 
27. 

Sanyojanas, the ten Fetters; 47, 
103, 208. 

Sarjyutta Nikaya, 45, 46. 

Sariputta, a chief disciple, 45, 
137, 180. 

Schelling quoted, 115. 

Schlagintweit's Buddhism in 
Tibet, 252. 

Science of Religion, the term 
discussed, 10. 

Self or soul, 28, 209, 212. 

Separation from the world, 163. 

Silas, the three (moral conduct), 
65, 137. Compared with rea- 
son and faith, 180. 

Socrates compared to Gotama, 15 6. 

Socrat'c Dialogues, 45. 

Soma, a god, 61. 

Sotapatti-saqyutta quoted, 239. 

Soul-theory, universal stage in 
religious belief, 24. Denied 
in Buddhism, 29. 

Soul, belief of early Aryans re- 
garding, 15. Pre-existence of, 

17. The Great Soul, 20. 
i Knowledge of, the mystical, 

28. Going to the moon after 
death of the body, 82, 247. 



202 



INDEX. 



St. Hilaircj "Le Bouddha et sa 

Religion.'' 197. 
Stiauss's Life of Christ, 35. 
Sudras, the fourth caste, 23. 
"Supernatural Religion," 36. 
Suttu Nipata quoted, 106, 107, 

1 LI. 121. 171. i 
Suttas, the Pali Buddhist, 45. J 
Sutta-vibhanga, exposition of the 

Patimokkha, 42. 

Tanha, craving, cause of re-birth, 
95. Similar doctrines in Plato, 
96 — 98. Cessation of, in Ara- 
hatship, 99. 

Tertullian on the soul, 240. 

Tevijja Sutta summarized, 56 — 
69. 

Thomas a Kempis, 166. 

Tibetan ritual, 193. Praying 
wheels, 138. Doctrine of ema- 
nations, 142. 

Tibetanism and Romanism, 3, 
193. 

Tittiriya Brahmans, 57. 

Transmigration of soulsnotVedic, 
73. Probably not an original 
Aryan conception, 74. Vari- 
ous instances of belief in, 76 — 

80. In the early Upanishads, 

81. Later Hindu view of, 
83—86. Not taught by iio- 
'n.ma, 91. 

Trenckner's"PiliMiscellany,"49. 
Tyler's " Primitive Culture," 75, 
' 247. 



Tyrbo, the Manichean, 248. 

Unitarianism amongJews,Greek8, 

and Hindus, 18. 
Upanishads, 26—28, 106, 108, 

210, 211. 
Upasamo cessation, 212. 
Uposatha meetings of the Order, 

41. 

Vaisyas, the third caste, 23. 
Varuna, a god, Gl. 
Vasettha,ayoung Brahman, 56 — 
69" 

Vedantist philosophy, 27, 31. 
Vehicle, the so-called Great, 194, 

254. The Little, 254. 
Vcluiiya, the mystic gem, 133. 
Vinaya Pitaka, its contents, 42. 

Its age, 43, 44. 

Wheel, mystic Treasure of the, 

131, 133. 
Wisdom, Christian and Buddhist 

ideals of, 141—151. 
Woman, tin; ideal, 134. 
Women, as teachers in ancient 

India, 154. 
Wood's "Animals Here and 

Hereafter," 80. 

Yama, a god, 61. 
Yatramulle Unnansc, 187. 

Zoroaster, 123. 



Misprints. 



P. 23, for Sudras, read Sudras. 

P. 41, for Pavarana, read Pavarana. 

P. 45, for The Suttas, in the third Nikaya, give the same doctrines, 
read, The Suttas in the third Nikaya give the same doc- 
trines. 

P. 49, note, for Brahman, read Brahmans. 

P. 53, line 6, after dissolved, insert a comma. 

P. 93, five lines from the bottom, for serve the moral cause, read, 

save the moral cause. 
P. 100, for Nirvana, read Nirvana. 
P. 133, for Veluriya, read Veluriya. 



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